The difference between collaboration and unified communications

In today's era, buzzwords are so popular that they can even be said to be "rampant". In the field of IT communications, there are also many buzzwords, and collaboration is one of them. Under the "rendering" of manufacturers and industry experts, collaboration is almost related to all communications and has almost become a synonym for communication. Therefore, don't be too surprised when you receive greetings such as "Happy/Merry Collaboration and a Prosperous New Year." during Christmas or New Year's holidays.

After the joke, let's get serious. Buzzwords can't help you build your company's unified communications roadmap. The concept of collaboration is too vague and needs further elaboration before it can be used by you. Perhaps it can provide some reference for the formulation of your unified communications roadmap. As one of the followers of collaboration, the author has nearly 10 years of experience in collaboration in business. Combining several articles and opinions I have published in the past, the author has made the following classification of collaboration, hoping to provide reference for the formulation of your communications roadmap and investment plan.

Category 1: Basic collaboration

In the original sense, collaboration refers to the discussion, communication and cooperation between a group of information workers on work projects, including the exchange of information, acquisition and sharing of resources, etc. Usually, this type of collaboration has no special requirements for the infrastructure of collaboration. As long as the above effects can be achieved, the collaboration is considered successful. This type of collaboration is equivalent to what we usually call UC-U (UC-User, unified communications for individual users). The most essential requirement for this type of collaboration is to access the contacts you want to contact and whose status is available, usually including status information presentation, IM one-click communication, calling, sharing, video, mobile access and other segmented functions. From this point of view, this type of collaboration is no different from the unified communications we often talk about. Maybe you want to say social media; indeed, social media is a new thing, but it still cannot escape the scope of unified communications and still belongs to the first type of collaboration - basic collaboration.

Category 2: Role-based collaboration

In this type of collaboration, collaboration is considered a business function associated with a certain role or job position. For example, the general manager will often organize meetings with his subordinates; sales or professional service personnel want to add experts to the chat box or telephone/video conference with customers/potential customers... To achieve this type of collaboration, in addition to the basic functions of the first type of collaboration, more structured, flexible and easy-to-use tools should be added. For example, they may require live recording of meetings and more frequent use of desktop or application sharing to express opinions or state facts. These functions are classified by application, and common ones include voice/video/web conferencing.

Moreover, in many cases, such collaboration is also linked to the work environment and requires the use of some professional enterprise-level collaboration tools, such as Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Quickr, etc. In this case, the collaboration tools are deeply embedded in the collaboration workshop and work together.

Category 3: Process-based collaboration

This type of collaboration emphasizes treating collaboration as a specific business process step. These processes usually need to be repeatable, measurable, auditable, always unique, or specifically designed to achieve a specific result. In this regard, Salesforce.com has set a good example for us. Its AppExchange is a typical process-based collaboration application. This type of collaboration has another perhaps more famous name: CEBP (Communications Enable Business Processes). Avaya, a big player in the field of unified communications and contact centers, is one of the advocates and leaders of CEBP.

Understanding the classification of collaboration (my classification is for reference only) will help you figure out what type of unified communications and collaboration system your company really needs, and further provide a reference for your IT communications investment plan. Now, after reading my classification, you may immediately understand a truth: collaboration has "levels". Basic collaboration is common and cheap, and most people need it; while advanced collaboration is often used by only a few people!