Forrester Blogs » Category: Information Workplace

GSA Picks Google Apps: What It Means

Posted by Ted Schadler on the Content & Collaboration Professionals Blog on December 2, 2010

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Ted Schadler

The General Services Administration made a bold decision to move its email and collaboration systems to the cloud. In the RFP issued last June, it was easy to see their goals in the statement of objectives:

This Statement of Objectives (SOO) describes the goals that GSA expects to achieve with regard to the

1. modernization of its e-mail system;

2. provision of an effective collaborative working environment;

3. reduction of the government’s in-house system maintenance burden by providing related business, technical, and management functions; and

4. application of appropriate security and privacy safeguards.

GSA announced yesterday that they choose Google Apps for email and collaboration and Unisys as the implementation partner.

So what does this mean?

What it means (WIM) #1: GSA employees will be using a next-generation information workplace. And that means mobile, device-agnostic, and location-agile. Gmail on an iPad? No problem. Email from a home computer? Yep. For GSA and for every other agency and most companies, it's important to give employees the tools to be productive and engage from every location on every device. "Work becomes a thing you do and not a place you go." [Thanks to Earl Newsome of Estee Lauder for that quote.]

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Employee Advocates Emerge From Empowered Workforce

Posted by Matthew Brown on the Content & Collaboration Professionals Blog on November 22, 2010

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Matthew Brown

Ever heard a senior leader in your organization proclaim “Everyone’s in sales!”? I have. In fact, it’s a phrase I’ve heard a lot in the last three years from executives at conferences, industry events, client meetings and more. To me, it’s right up there with “All hands on deck!” and “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” (only in a less evocative, corporate-speak kind of way).

Yet during the most recent recession, the phrase has taken on a more urgent tone and seems to mean: “Demand stinks. Drop what you’re doing. Advocate for the company.” Particularly among already hyper-efficient companies, stimulating demand with a whole-company response may just be one recipe for retaining existing jobs and creating new ones.
 
But are employees responding? Forrester’s most recent Workforce Forrsights survey suggests few actually heed this executive call to action.
 
As an extension of our Empowered research series looking at employee empowerment, we decided to measure employee advocacy by borrowing the methodology of Net Promoter. We surveyed over 5,000 information workers across five countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and Germany. We included 18 different professions and multiple industries. In the report, "Do Your Employees Advocate For Your Company" we use two questions to measure employee advocacy:
  1. How likely are you to recommend your company’s products or services to a friend or family member?
  2. How likely are you to recommend a job at your company to a friend or family member?
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A Conversation With IT Leaders On Workplace Technology Empowerment

Posted by Matthew Brown on the Content & Collaboration Professionals Blog on September 8, 2010

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Matthew Brown

I spoke to the IT leadership team at a major automotive manufacturer last week on the topic of empowerment. The group consisted of the CIO, security and compliance professionals, business strategy, HR representatives, and other IT managers in charge of mobility, social computing, innovation, and application development initiatives. At Forrester, we talk about empowerment in terms of the rising imbalance between enabling technology tools we have in our personal lives and those we have in the workplace. Think mobile, social, cloud, and consumer video tools. Our data indicates that almost 51% of information workers now believe they have better technology at home than they have at work. And 37% are using these personal tools get real work done.

At least anecdotally, the gap between consumer technology change and IT’s ability to assimilate those technologies into the workplace looks to be widening. A recent report recently highlighted this gap, explaining that in one government agency, it takes 18 to 24 months to roll out a single new IT system, while it took only 24 months to invent the iPhone. 
 
Clearly IT budgets will never keep up with private investments in technology innovation. But it’s not all about money. What else is causing the impedance mismatch between personal/home and workplace technologies? A few comments from my audience highlight the complexities our corporate IT departments face in this age of empowerment:
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And The Long Sought Replacement For Email Is . . .

Posted by Tim Walters on the Content & Collaboration Professionals Blog on May 24, 2010

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Tim Walters

Email sucks, right? It undermines workplace communication and knowledge sharing with its 1-to-1, letter-writing paradigm. Its lame attempt to be open and communal via carbon copies (yes, that’s “cc”) leads only to splintered conversations and further confusion. And then there are attachments, which are modeled on the stuff that used to accompany your letter. 

(“Dear Sirs: Enclosed please find the 1500 page unsolicited manuscript of my first novel, entitled  ‘Email: Threat or Menace? – A Comedy.’ I have also enclosed a testimonial from my 8th-grade creative writing teacher, Mrs. Cartwright, and a home movie of my visit to Walden Pond. I trust you have a Super-8 movie projector handy?”)

 Attachments mock security policies and the effort to establish a single version of the truth, and they surrender control over the structure and flow of a multiple-part presentation to the random whims of the order in which the receiver opens (or, doesn’t open) the multiple attachments.

Enterprise 2.0 enthusiasts (count me in) have argued for several years that Email’s manifest deficiencies could and would be overcome with open, social, and dynamic 2.0-based communication and collaboration tools. However, there’s also long been the recognition that Email – or rather, Email users – would not go down without a fight.

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