More Structure, More Process, More Value – The Evolution of a Collaborative Workplace (CWP) within Organizations

Throughout our years of experience, working with hundreds of customers large and small, CorasWorks has witnessed a standard path as organizations evolve from a basic SharePoint collaborative environment to a more sophisticated collaborative workplace.  This evolution is largely a result of growing demands by business users as they learn that they can get more and better applications as part of a single environment. We find customers receive greater value from the platform, and increased return on investment, as they move up the stack, creating more structure and process, towards a customized, seamless collaborative workplace.  So what do we mean by structure and how do organizations achieve greater value?  Let’s start with a graphical depiction of the evolution, and explore each stage and its value.

Ad Hoc Collaboration

For many organizations, SharePoint starts off as a web based file share. They begin with “ad hoc” collaborative sites.   SharePoint sites are spawned from forms or documents, created to support meetings, or provide general collaboration to share data and information (e.g., tasks, announcements, issues, etc.) surrounding a particular need.  Ad hoc collaboration is synonymous with “islands of collaboration,” where there is no clear relationship or connection between lists and sites.  There is certainly value to ad hoc collaboration, as it helps take individuals and organizations from having data and information in isolation on their desktop to making it accessible to team members.

The Challenge with Islands of Collaboration

The challenge to ad hoc collaboration is that it lacks structure; subsequently, users can soon become unproductive and frustrated trying to navigate a tangled web of ad hoc sites to find what they need.  Sites can become stagnant as they get lost in the sea of collaboration and new sites are created frequently, further perpetuating the problem.  Furthermore, users also find that information within various sites has relevance and importance with respect to work being done in other sites, yet there is no relationship or connection between them.  Demand for greater structure and organization, driven by a need for a better user experience, prompts the next stage of workplace evolution: structured collaboration.

Structured Collaboration – A Kinder, Gentler Environment

The move from ad hoc to structured collaboration means adding capabilities on top of the basic collaboration  platform, because structured collaboration can’t be accomplished “out of the box.”  Many organizations were initially drawn to CorasWorks based on its ability to quickly and easily help them gain needed structure, or in many instances, control the chaos created by ad hoc collaboration.  The structure starts with improved navigation and connections between sites and site collections.  The first step is when organizations begin to lay out a structured hierarchy.  Many just take their organization chart and lay in sites that mimic this structure.  They then start to build simple clusters that meet local needs such as dashboards for management linked to various sites.  The CorasWorks suite of navigation components and roll-ups provides a no-programming answer to the need for structure and the foundation for business applications.

Business Applications

The structured environment that is made possible with CorasWorks sets the stage for building business applications on the platform.  This is when process starts to enter the picture. With the ability to better navigate within and between sites and site collections, in addition to aggregating and connecting data with roll-ups, and creating a vast assortment of displays,  CorasWorks customers have the core components in place to snap together business applications.  The next step is driven by CorasWorks Actions that enable organizations to drive business activity and transform a passive workplace into an active workplace.  These capabilities, in conjunction with the many other components, combine to provide an application tier on top of the platform.  Templated solutions are provided to customers that help accelerate their success in building and deploying business applications.  More and more organizations are skipping the ad hoc phase of the evolutionary process and moving directly into building business applications using CorasWorks on SharePoint.

A Seamless Workplace of Interconnected Business Applications

The next phase is when organizations really decide that working together is better.  Some organizations just stop with the previous phase, and maintain an environment where each application is siloed, just like the old days based upon the old ways.  Extensive visibility, accountability, and inter-dependence is not for everyone.

For most, however, they quickly realize that business applications often contain data and information that needs to be used by individuals, teams, or groups within the organization that don’t have the need or desire to work within the application where that data resides.  For instance, a services team may be interested in the status of proposals to ensure they are properly planning and staffed for new business that comes on board.  While they don’t want, or need, to work in the proposal management application, they may want access to the data within their Consulting Services application – the information they need, the way they need to see it.  Similarly, executives may want slices of information that reside in various applications to help keep their finger on the pulse of the organization and better manage it. 

Thus, this phase of workplace evolution is when customers begin interconnecting solutions and creating role-based, action-enabled dashboards to provide data and information where users need it, how they need to see it.  And, as with all stages of the evolutionary process, CorasWorks makes it possible without the need for programming.

As the applications get inter-connected and information starts to flow across the workplace, there is interdependence.  A change in one department or application could affect the operations in another.  Accordingly, this is the time for broader standards.  Once again, CorasWorks is designed to support this phase of the maturing workplace with such capabilities as Central Configuration, Scope Management and Design Migrator.  At this stage, your workplace is an important asset to your organization.  You need a consistent and reliable way to manage it and the applications within it.  CorasWorks is there to support you.

You've come a long way from sharing documents on the web - welcome to the new world of the seamless collaborative workplace, powered by CorasWorks!