Collaboration systems
Each enterprise realizes business processes by carrying out its activity. Depending on the type of activity and organizational structure, the existence of business processes is more or less aware, but in general terms, they all position themselves in the area between structured processes and unstructured processes.
A structured process is one whose course can be planned before its implementation and then the process itself can be performed repeatedly in the same way. We are able to precisely define what stages are part of the process, what are the dependencies and conditions of transition between them, who carries out each stage of the process and what resources are needed for its implementation. The above also shows that at the level of IT systems it is possible to plan what data and applications will be necessary for implementation.
Unstructured processes are the complete opposite - in their case, we can only determine the end result of the process. We do not know what activities the process will consist of, who will implement it and what resources will be necessary. Specific activities and required resources are defined already during the process by its participants, often as a result of just acquired experience. In principle, it can be said that each instance of an unstructured process can be different.
In the real world, semi-structured processes are the most common. It happens that certain parts of unstructured processes (sub-processes) are structured processes or vice versa. An enterprise may have many business processes, some of which may be supported with the use of IT tools. However, taking into account the variety and the degree of structuring of the processes, an appropriate range of IT tools is required. On the one hand, repetitive processes occurring in banks or administration will require packages such as IBM Workflow, IBM Domino or Microsoft Sharepoint Server allowing for graphic design of workflows, on the other hand, in companies such as graphic studios, law firms or design offices, it is necessary to use solutions, which will not restrict the creativity of employees.
In organizations implementing unstructured ad-hoc processes, the condition of efficient operation is the ability to organize users into project groups and the availability of flexible tools such as an efficient teamwork system such as IBM Domino or Microsoft Exchange, direct communication software such as IBM Sametime or Microsoft Lync.
Recently, Social Business-class software has been gaining more and more use, which improves communication within the enterprise by means of tools that enable searching for content and competences, grouping employees and content, creating blogs and wikis, tagging information and subscribing to notifications about new documents and changes. An additional functional extension may be activity streams supporting project management. Tools supporting social business include, among others, IBM Connections, Jive Software products, Drupal Commons, Microsoft Sharepoint.
A characteristic feature of modern collaboration systems is their availability on many system platforms and mobile devices.
Our company has made a number of implementations of cooperation systems, the common feature of which is an individual architecture tailored to the needs of the client's organization. Our achievements include group work systems supporting e-mail communication as well as time and task management, direct communication systems supporting electronic meetings with audio / video communication and workflow class applications regulating workflow within business processes. As part of our implementation methodology, we adhere to the principle of providing customers with measurable business benefits in the shortest possible time. Therefore, we assume the quick launch of a number of micro-applications that improve the implementation of processes and undergo continuous improvement in line with the growing needs of customers.