6 Reasons Enterprise Collaboration Fails and What to Do About It

Business collaboration solutions are plentiful, but enterprise adoption remains low. We look at some reasons why, plus ways companies can improve their uptake.

Companies often deploy collaboration technologies without providing their employees with guidance on which tools they should use and why, sometimes giving employees multiple, overlapping solutions. Without understanding how to use these tools, the right content and information is not being generated, and companies are unable to drive usage. Employees become frustrated, disengaged and will ultimately abandon the solution.

Most companies’ objectives typically aren’t centered on whether people are merely collaborating better or have generally increased productivity. Companies typically are focused on key performance indicators, such as increased revenue, reduction in operating costs, better customer service, reduction in turnover and faster time to market. When disconnected from goals or objectives, the collaboration initiative will not be considered relevant or critical to the organization. In turn, this will lead to a lack of executive sponsorship and mindshare.

It’s not enough to just set up a collaboration system to connect employees together—enterprise-grade collaboration tools are not the same as going on Facebook or Instagram. Employees need to understand with whom they are connecting, how they can find the right experts and get recommendations of people relevant to getting their work done. Furthermore, it’s important not to have any artificial barriers to collaboration; employees need to have the ability to connect with partners, suppliers and customers when and how they need, in a manner that is secure and traceable.

When enterprise collaboration supports employees in their daily tasks, they will be adopted and highly used. That means employees will need to easily be able to access content and data from other business process systems to have full context of what problems need to be solved or what decisions need to be made. There should be no silos of collaboration or roadblocks to bringing in process data.

People will only continue to use a system if content is relevant and easy to access. Content governance policies must be established, but they also must be flexible enough to allow employees to connect, collaborate and get work done without interference. Too much governance will cause problems in keeping content current, and too little will mean an overwhelming amount of outdated and inaccurate information.

Not all collaboration tools are equal, though many boast the same basic functionality. The challenge in selecting a solution without knowing what business problems need to be solved is that companies may end up focusing on specific features. Before starting an evaluation of vendors, the best approach is to first think about what business challenges the company is trying to solve.