The App Heard 'Round the World

Email is pretty easy. With a few clicks and a little typing, I can communicate with anyone around the world. Email is also pretty fast. In a few seconds, the email I send is waiting in the other person's inbox for viewing. Email is pretty convenient; I can attach files, include hyperlinks, and contact many people at once. In the communication toolbox, email is as handy and necessary as a screwdriver. In the global collaboration toolbox, however, email is more like a sledgehammer -- good for specific tasks, but destructive if overused.

For example, think of eight people in different offices around the globe working on a project plan. They don't know each other, but a senior manager has put them together for this task. Naturally, each person has different expertise and opinions. They work on the plan and send out emails to the team. Draft after draft is distributed, copied, edited, split, and recombined. In the end, the team spends as much time piecing the final plan together as they spent drafting it in the first place.

Next time, they could use an actual collaboration tool, rather than a messaging tool. My preferred tool is SharePoint, though there are a few of them out there. SharePoint provides the necessary architecture out of the box, and there are a number of qualified independent vendors who can to build it to spec. With a little training, workers can take advantage of features like personal profiles and social networking features so they can get to know their teammates on the other side of the world or down the hall.

There are plenty of task-specific features as well. Document workspaces leverage check in/check out and versioning functionality so the team never has to wonder about the latest changes or accidentally editing an old version. Alerts via email or RSS feed automatically notify the team when new drafts are available for review. Personally, one of the features I like the most is threaded discussion groups. My team can keep track of ideas this way, and it really saves on the conference calls and note-taking. Another huge advantage of SharePoint is having a platform to keep senior management informed by giving them read-only rights to the collaboration site.

I know today's entry reads like a sell sheet, but whatever tool your organization chooses, I hope they make a sincere effort to transition out of email. It's just not the right tool.