How task management is helping companies avoid the productivity pitfalls of email.
CONCORD, Mass., Feb 4, 2005--: Email has changed the way we communicate. Its main advantages - speed of delivery and quick carbon copying have made us more productive with important information getting to those who need to use it quickly. However, this low cost of delivery means that our inboxes have become electronic dumping bins for everything from friendly “pet needs a home” emails, back and forth “where and when shall we meet” emails to ads for low mortgage rates. The initial productivity gain may now be turning into a productivity drain as we spend more and more time sorting through our inboxes for important information and deleting unimportant emails.
Companies are now turning to online collaboration, a new Internet communication medium that can solve many of the email clogging problems that stall employee productivity.
"An online workplace acts like a shared email inbox, with information updated and organized in one place on the web, accessible only to invited project stakeholders," said Katherine Santer, a vice president at ProjectLounge.com, Inc., a company that has been hosting online workplaces with task management powered by IBM Lotus collaboration software for four years.
“With an online workplace employees move to a process of sharing information in one place instead of exchanging information through back and forth emailing. And by limiting access to project stakeholders only, unimportant or irrelevant information never makes it in.”
Similar to a wiki, an online workplace is a website that allows its audience to add and edit content. However it differs with wikis in one major area, security. The data in an online workplace can only be accessed by invited members. And the read, edit, author access privileges for each member are controlled by the manager of a workplace. The software hosted by ProjectLounge.com, Inc. allows users to set approval workflows ensuring content is added or edited only with the approval of specified members, and each revision or addition is author and time stamped.
In contrast to email, the organization and indexing of work-related information is automatic in an online workplace. Content is posted by the author to the relevant area of the workplace, removing the need for individual email recipients to organize each piece of information they receive. They simply access their online workplace and view new additions to the workplace in their relevant area, for example, the workplace calendar, document library, task management area, or issue tracking area.
“The beauty of an online workplace is that employees can get straight to what’s new with work related issues, by making their first point of call their online workplace, which is free of spam, and contains content added and organized by other members of their online workplace.” added Ms Santer.
Emails with file attachments will become a thing of the past. File attachments and revisions to file attachments are stored in the online workplace rather than exchanged back and forth in emails, considerably reducing the load on mail servers. Unlike Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, the content of an online workplace is completely searchable including the content of file attachments.
Deleting emails that are part of email threads to reduce repetitive information and the size of your inbox becomes unnecessary. Each response to or revision of a document is automatically grouped with the original and other responses by the workplace.
Instead of sending out group emails such as “car for sale” announcements, team members can post messages to the message board in the online workplace. Emails sent and resent to obtain group agreement are replaced with consensus building via web conferencing, instant messaging, polling, or screen sharing within the online workplace with task management.
“By reducing the need for so many group emails, the volume of emails that an employee needs to sort through each day is reduced.” Ms Santer added.
Online collaboration lessens the productivity pitfalls of email while maintaining its advantages like quick dissemination to multiple recipients, secure browser based access to your communications from anywhere via the Internet and the ability to share files with colleagues or clients outside organizational firewalls. This is why it seems more and more people are switching to online collaboration with task management.
"I have enjoyed working with ProjectLounge over the last couple of months."
CFO
ProjectLounge is an Advanced Business Partner of IBM/Lotus, and uses Lotus Team WorkPlace (QuickPlace) software to bring you web collaboration.