Collaboration Technology 2.0

The conundrum many big organisation's face is what they will do if an upturn comes and find their business partners (suppliers) have gone to the wall while budgets were frozen. The rule that keeping a customer is easier than finding a new one, works the otherway.                                                      Having spoken to a number of IT suppliers (Msoft, IBM, SAP partners etc.) with lucrative but frozen pipelines, many are finding that the major vendors, whose products they integrate, are not prepared to help them through the bad times. However, they not just stuck between the two opposing forces of customer and vendor, more like four as you have to add in the bank and the taxman.

What do you do when stuck in a torture room where all four walls close in you? One person has mothballed his company, another has rebranded his. What they both would have liked to have done is collaborate with others - but how?

The world is in flux and the basis of power is moving from organisations to networks that can mobilise, accomplish objectives and then disperse. Despite the fact that money/funding is going down, social need is going up. These need to be met by efficient networks of people - not overburden bureaucratic organisations. The trouble is how do you trust people you don't know? 

For people and organisations to collaborate well they need to: 1) have a clear goal 2) be clear about shared measures of success 3) bring the right team together. However, collaboration is difficult because many people/organisations get stuck in self-interest. Multi-partner collaboration is a necessity, not just for funding, sharing resources or best practices but for survival.