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Why Can't We All Just Collaborate?
Jan 2004What is Collaboration ?
"Collaboration" is defined as "joint work toward a common end." By that definition, all business involves the act of collaboration, and it's no surprise that technology that facilitates working together in the digital world is hot.
You are probably familiar with basic collaboration capabilities that enable, for example, the routing of documents through a predefined workflow for comment and review. Your office email system might enable not only shared documents but also collaboration in the form of shared calendars. The newer generation of collaboration tools adds capabilities like virtual project tracking, team chat rooms, and better ways to share comments on documents to create a more complete solution.
Collaboration in the Publishing Industry
In the publishing environment, collaborative activities are especially obvious among the staff responsible for content development and production: authors, editors, production staff, software developers, project managers, designers, artists, and so on. Such groups regularly share documents and information—including conversation—with each other. In most cases, these teams haven't believed that their interaction can occur effectively without resorting to traditional approaches—printed materials for review, revisions via marked up paper pages, physical meetings for team members. Typically this is true whether the individuals work in the same office or in different states. Collaboration software aims to change all that.
Of course, "collaboration" is just a new term for software capabilities that are already present and accepted to a small degree at many publishers. By now, many publishers have implemented content management systems (CMSs) that help users share content as well as information about content status (e.g., that a document is ready to publish). This is a rudimentary form of what is now called "collaboration" and is a key component of any content management initiative.
Why Collaborate?
The publishing industry is a prime candidate for early adoption of the new collaboration tools, and we believe publishers who take advantage of them will increase content development and production efficiencies. Today's environment of external contributors, telecommuters, and cross-departmental initiatives demands a way to bring people together to work efficiently. While publishers might never find a digital replacement for some parts of their work processes, significant improvements are possible for even those publishers whose contributors or staff resist digitization. And for distributed teams, the savings on shipping costs alone are plenty of motivation.
Peter Frishauf, collaboration expert and entrepreneur, spoke with Really Strategies' Jeff Wood this month and shared his thoughts on publishers and collaboration (see Oh Really! 5 Questions with Peter Frishauf):
"Collaboration is a hot topic now because in most companies, especially publishing companies, organizational productivity improvements are becoming more elusive, and it's probably weakest at the central office. Management is frustrated because they bought everyone a PC, installed a network, and bought expensive, proprietary software they believed would increase productivity dramatically. Initially, providing computers, networks and the Internet helped: personal productivity increased as people could create and edit copy faster, cheaper and better with a PC and word processor than with a typewriter, organizational productivity increased as employees could research subjects on the Web, and deliver copy by email. But where do we go from here? What's the best way for multiple people to work on a document? How do we make sure that versions are not confused?"
Collaboration Tools and Products
Increasingly, CMS vendors are enhancing their product suite through development or acquisition of collaboration tools, many of which can also be purchased separately. There are also plenty of independent collaboration products. Research director, Eric Woods from Ovum estimates in his article "Collaborative Solutions" from The Business Case for Collaboration that "the collaboration market was worth more than $2 billion in 2002. By 2006, the market will be worth more than $2.5 billion, but in that time the market for the new generation of advanced collaboration tools will more than double, growing from $435 million to $923 million."
A few examples of collaboration solutions are listed below.
CMS Software Solutions
Perhaps the best-known evidence of the blossoming collaboration and CMS market is the trend that Documentum started with its acquisition of eRoom, a privately held software company specializing in browser-based collaboration tools. The eRoom Enterprise product combines Documentum's content management tools with collaboration tools, including file sharing, chat, calendar, notes, project plans, and more.
Since Documentum's acquisition other CMS providers have included collaboration technology in their core products and services—Interwoven has acquired iManage, Stellent and Percussion added collaboration tools internally, and Vignette recently acquired Intraspect.
Web Technologies
Wikis. A wiki web page allows documents to be authored collectively using a web browser (see Wiki 101 for a detailed explanation of wiki technology and to learn what the heck "wiki" means). Controls are in place that deter vandalism and complete anarchy but ultimately, anyone can edit a wiki web page. Although this may initially frighten publishers who are long set in their structured workflows, a wiki web page can be a useful environment for content specialists to work together quickly and easily with no concerns regarding version control, email, or incompatible software.
Blogs. By now most publishers are familiar with web logs (or blogs)—a web diary of sorts. Blog technology is related to collaboration technology as it's a tool that helps anyone instantly publish information and research (and sometimes nonsense) to the web. Blogs facilitate communication among small groups in a way that is easier to follow than email or discussion forums. There has been an increase in collaborative blogs that consolidate people's efforts, research, and findings on a specific topic. Word of mouth has become an amazingly powerful force thanks to the internet and some people are turning to topic-specific blogs as well as (and sometimes rather than) traditional media outlets.
The popular, Where is Raed blog was such a phenomenon during the Iraq war that 20,000 people were regularly reading this blog just 10 days into the conflict. Salam Pax, author of the blog, recently published his book Salam Pax: The Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi, with Grove Press and is also a contributor to the UK's The Guardian, Internet Edition. A great example of traditional publishers' acceptance of an initially nontraditional publishing approach.
Shared Workspaces Groove Networks™ offers software that promotes collaboration across the office or across the globe. Groove Workspace software integrates with Office and Outlook and provides a "shared space" on users' desktops that includes tools such as discussion, calendar, contacts, web pages, files, shared images, etc. Additionally, the file sharing capabilities allow joint editing of Word documents and ensures that everyone always has the latest version.
Of course Microsoft also offers a collaboration tool, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, which many users might feel comfortable with because it's in their chosen base-software suit. The same collaboration tools that allow users to share information, mark up files, collaborate with whiteboards, and even the ability to record conversations is offered with this package.
Impact These Tools Have (or Will Have) on Traditional Publishing Practices
Peer Review
In traditional scholarly publishing, a paper may endure an incubation time of 1 to 3 years from the idea conception to actual publication. Many academic publishers have learned that this timeframe is unacceptable to their audiences and work manuscripts through the peer-review process on a fast-tracked schedule. However, the fast-track peer-review process often requires dedicated editors whose primary responsibility is to shuffle files and wrestle the work from reviewers, track electronic file transmission, and establish some kind of semi-automated or automated workflow. All of which add up to costly time and material expenses.
A shared workspace solution could provide tools that improve productivity and effectiveness of the peer-review process to capture reviewers' comments in a timely fashion. Just some of the tools helpful to the process include
- document review that illustrates comments and suggested changes routed through each reviewer; note that the elimination of paper shipping costs can often be achieved, even if individuals still choose to print out documents when they read them
- discussion functionality that details exchanges of ideas in a hierarchical format
- calendar feature to track and remind reviewers of deadlines
- pictures option to display proposed illustrations and halftones
- chat technology to speak in real time to other reviewers
- whiteboarding tools that allow conference callers to collaborate visually in real time
Publishing Destinations
Scholarly and academic publications still have much authority and credibility for revealing important findings. However, the availability and proliferation of new publishing destinations has resulted in a growing number of online alternative reference destinations for academicians, scientists, and researchers—the primary target market for the academic and scholarly journal. Examples of these new online references include blogs, wiki web pages, and open access publications.
Collaboration technology enables these publishing destinations to proliferate, and search engines increase their findability. For example, a recent Google search on the topic "coffee consumption and diabetes" listed a medical blog above the Annals of Internal Medicine, even though it was Annals who first published this finding! The publishing industry needs to increase customer loyalty and retention as well as increase time to market.
Conclusion
As always, technology is only a means to an end—in this case, more effective ways for people to work together—and the end won't be realized unless care is taken in how the technology is implemented. However, collaboration tools are evolving to the point where publishers could gain true value if implemented in their organization. At the minimum, publishers should be aware of the impact these tools are having on the dissemination and absorption of content in order to plan their own future strategies.
