Impact

In this issue:

Letter from the executive office: What if there was no weakest link?

Poll: What collaboration tools are you using today?

Article: Collaboration – enabling an efficient enterprise

Resource centre: Collaboration tools and resources

A letter from the executive office

What if there was no weakest link?

The ability to collaborate effectively is a strategic competitive advantage in the knowledge-based economy, making an efficient collaboration infrastructure a necessity. The good news is that today the tools exist to address all of your collaboration scenarios, making your organization more efficient.

At Bell we've been investing heavily in collaboration since 2001 and in those six years, we have learned a great deal about what is required for business-transforming collaboration. In fact, Bell was recently cited by Forrester as being at the corporate vanguard with respect to collaboration. We have taken this strategic intelligence and developed a model to assist our clients in developing their own transformational models.

In this issue of Impact, we offer a window into those six years of experience and offer you a comprehensive set of resources and articles to help you learn about collaboration, diagnose your needs, and design solutions that will help you meet your information sharing and management goals.

In the end, a collaboration strategy comes down to examining how your people collaborate in relation to five key drivers:

• Creating better internal communication for employees and project teams
• Giving mobile or remote workers access to more effective tools and timely information
• Collecting, managing and controlling access to information assets so the right information is accessible to as wide and distributed an audience as needed, but no more
• Improving interactions with customers for greater service
• Improving interactions with partners to accelerate innovation and reduce time-to-market

Next month, we'll be taking a look at IP migration and the future of the application-aware network. I look forward the continued opportunity to share with you our vision of how information and communication technologies are helping, and in some cases pushing, enterprises to evolve

At Bell, we want to be your partner in helping you proactively and strategically manage the assessment and implementation of these enabling technologies. I always welcome your feedback and opinions.

Best regards,

Stéphane Boisvert

President, Bell Enterprise

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Collaboration – enabling an efficient enterprise

As globalization increases and project teams located in several different time zones become a reality, the benefits of creating a truly collaborative environment across the organization are also increasing. While many organizations recognize the need to provide their employees with the ability to instantly share relevant documents and consolidate communications methods on fewer devices, only a minority of organizations are truly enabled for collaboration.

In fact, in many cases where collaborative projects have been undertaken they have failed or only partially achieved their desired outcomes. This is largely because companies have not integrated their collaborative strategies well enough.

The reason for this is well illustrated by Rob Koplowitz of Forrester Research, quoted in an October 2007 ComputerWorld Canada article: "Collaboration is not about technology, it is about cultural change. For true collaboration to take place, companies need to break away from the command-control culture, and allow and empower employees to collaborate. Ultimately, it is about having an organization that implements the ideas generated by collaboration."

At Bell, our own unique experience has allowed us to understand collaboration from the perspective of a cultural change. We have been driving our own collaborative transformation across the enterprise, and with this experience we have created a collaborative vision and roadmap for our customers.

In this white paper by Sandy Gillis, a Bell expert on collaboration, we share our vision and experience with you as you develop your own collaboration strategy. The white paper examines in depth:

• The impact of changing market dynamics
• The definition of collaboration
• What unified communications is all about
• The business value of collaboration
• How to build a collaboration roadmap

Download the white paper
(email address required)

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Collaboration resource centre:

These tools and resources will help you understand what the collaboration landscape looks like today, the latest tools, trends and technologies, and how to assess your needs in developing your collaboration strategy.

Collaboration white paper – enabling an efficient enterprise: Collaboration has come to mean many different things to different parts of an enterprise, and has evolved with technology over the past ten years. What is Bell's vision of the collaborative enterprise – and how do our own internal practices help us assist customers with their collaboration initiatives? Find out in this insightful white paper.

Download white paper
(email address required)

 

Needs assessment tool: Getting started on your collaboration roadmap? Download these 15 questions to help you get started. This tool provides a high level overview of some of the things you should consider when developing or updating your collaboration strategy.

Download now!
(email address required)

 

Video: McGill University wanted to provide ubiquitous wireless access to students, professors and university employees across its campus. A simple goal, a complex challenge to implement. How did Bell help?

Watch video

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Quick links:

Here are quick links to different solutions and services offered by Bell Enterprise: