Online tools can help users work together – but only if the tools themselves work. Our research suggests B2B collaboration has a long way to go.
Bees are experts at it. Even ants understand it. We can achieve more collectively than we can individually.
But when you move from the animal kingdom into the modern workplace, it’s about more than collective action: we need powerful digital tools to help us collaborate.
Connecting global users on different devices and networks is just the beginning. What if digital tools could make it easier, more natural and instinctive to collaborate? Combine the right platform with the right philosophy and the rewards are rich: knowledge sharing, borderless teams, and more engaged staff.
For companies that get it right, it’s honey all round.
"But what about data protection?" you may ask yourself now. Good design is also integral to ensuring data privacy. If you are interested, you can read our blog post "GDPR - get onboard" or download the related "Privacy by Design" White Paper.
ALE Rainbow - Transforming customer experiences
Privacy by Design - Business Collaboration built in accordance with GDPR.
Connex Web Series – Season 1 Episode 2
Today, there’s a proliferation of B2B collaboration software. However, it’s evolving so rapidly that many enterprises find themselves mired in a state of constant transition, tangled up in support issues and using multiple tools that are never fully adopted – or fully functional.
According to Wainhouse Research, 40% of enterprises have no unified communications (UC) provision at all, leaving employees to use unsanctioned, unsecured B2C platforms – or simply not collaborate at all. Shockingly, 40% of all licenses have not been deployed: a huge overspend caused by traditional, inflexible licensing models.
In fact, only 10% of enterprises have fully deployed UC throughout their enterprise. Even then, there’s often a mix of vendors and legacy systems – so there’s no guarantee of successful adoption.
Given these poor figures, it’s hardly surprising that in four out of ten companies, respondents rated the quality of their collaborative and personal productivity tools as low.
The sad truth is that most enterprises never manage to achieve a fully deployed, advanced collaboration experience. Digital collaboration is a proverbial “loose end” that has become difficult to tie up.
However, that’s changing – so it could be simpler than you think to unify your collaboration tools and implement a game-changing collaboration strategy.
New business models let you test drive technology
If you’ve already tried a few, and are tied into existing contracts, another new tool might not seem like a solution to your company’s collaboration challenges. But what if you could try it first – and prove that it worked before signing up?
Professional grade on-demand as well as freemium models give you the flexibility to scale features, technologies and user groups as needed. You can pay per user, per day, and per feature – however you like. So you can road test new collaboration software without an expensive commitment.
- Rainbow (freemium)
- Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)
- Communication platforms as a Service (CPaaS)
Collaboration software that’s open for business
Let’s take a step back. Software is rapidly rising to the very top of enterprise priority list – and it’s becoming a facilitator for other business units as well as a growth driver in itself.
Did you know that global finance giant Credit Suisse now employs more software developers than Facebook? Thousands of companies are building their own internal communication tools and billing systems, powering automated bots and even developing innovative new customer-facing products, thanks to big data, APIs and open standards.
For example, what if your collaboration tools were fully tailored to your business – from ADFS and SSO to geolocation, intranet, email, CRM and project management? You can integrate off-the-shelf UC solutions into existing business applications, work with a CPaaS partner to customize them – and more.
On Rainbow, even your developers collaborate
Deploying the Rainbow platform allows companies to develop and seamlessly integrate their own applications on top of an existing infrastructure. But that’s not all: it also offers access to an ever-growing pool of open source applications that run on this API.
They’re built and maintained by experienced partner developers, and available to all enterprise Rainbow users.
In the often-disconnected world of digital collaboration, it’s refreshing to see that open standards, custom integration and new business models offer great potential for growth, adoption and innovation.
With a new perspective on collaboration, every part of your business can be better connected.
And when all your systems are communicating clearly with each other, you can guarantee your users are too.
