- Include All Relevant Stakeholders: Don't make collaboration an IT-driven decision; make sure you have broad organizational input and support.
- Use A Benchmark Assessment: Define the right strategy by implementing a structured assessment tool based on best practices from multiple industries.
- Start With The Business: Identify key business objectives, and build the rest of your plan from there. Without a known and measurable goal, you will never know if your investment is adding value.
- Determine Who Needs What: Cut costs by provisioning the correct level of capabilities for each segment of a heterogeneous workforce.
- Create a comprehensive "personal responsibility" policy: Instead of creating a different use policy for various collaboration platforms, create a single context-specific policy that focuses on the responsibilities of each individual.
- Evaluate Collaboration Technology Across Four Categories: Information-sharing, communications, social networking and an integrated user experience across all tools.
- Identify Key Metrics: To link technology investment to business impact, a collaboration strategy will mandate metrics on adoption, use and impact.
- Gauge Service Delivery: Prioritize and assess gaps concerning global operations, regional deployments and local administrators.
- Establish A Change Management Strategy: This will help pinpoint the technology requirements of unique workforces and ensure proper adoption.
- Line Up Your Collaboration Strategy With Strategic Vendor Relationships: Not only could pricing and licensing terms be attractive, but benefits may also accrue in the areas of service and support.
ROB KOPLOWITZ [www.forrester.com] is a principal analyst at Forrester Research, where he serves information and knowledge management professionals. He will be presenting at Forrester's IT Forum 2010, May 26-28 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
