Recite Conferencing

Web Conferencing Success Stories

2009-12-18T09:00:00.001-05:00

Web conferencing delivers advantages that were unheard of a decade ago, giving small businesses the ability to reach out globally, and giving larger businesses the ability to reduce their communications and travel expenses.
The technology of web conferencing is based on Internet protocols, and transmits video and/or audio packets over the Internet on a prioritized basis. Early on in the Internet’s evolution this was not possible because of the “best effort” nature of Internet Protocol, but newer technologies offering packet prioritization higher-speed transport and broadband connectivity make web conferencing practical for everyday use. More importantly, it has become affordable for nearly everybody.
Successes in web conferencing are evident across a spectrum of business, from SOHO to small business users to enterprise users, across every industry from education to manufacturing to finance. This wide scope is possible for several reasons, including:
• The maturity of the technology, which has led to decreasing prices over time
• The availability of hosted web conferencing services, which eliminate the need for up-front capital expenditures
• The scope of sophistication of the technology, which ranges from simple webcam connections to high-end room video camera hookups
Let’s take a look at a few companies that have had success with web conferencing, and the benefits the technology has delivered to them.

GoToMeeting from Citrix Systems
GoToMeeting is a strategic tool for business consultancy Kaulkin Ginsberg Company. The currency of consulting businesses is communication, and as they cannot function without it, a good web conferencing system has been essential to Kaulkin Ginsberg.
Kaulkin Information Systems discovered GoToMeeting while attending a meeting with one of their vendors, and signed up immediately. The company now uses GoToMeeting and has been able to sustain better presentations, and make better first impression on their clients. In addition to making scheduled sales presentations, the company also uses GoToMeeting for ad hoc, last-minute demonstrations. The ease of use of the GoToMeeting system makes it possible for the company’s sales staff to move into a presentation as soon as the need arises, without advance preparation.
Because it allows up to 25 participants in a meeting, the company also uses the technology to conduct group sales demos to multiple prospects simultaneously, greatly increasing the productivity of the sales staff.
Beyond the initial sale, customer training is an important part of the Kaulkin’s process, and they use GoToMeeting to that end as well. The company reports that they have reduced training time by 30 percent, while retaining effectiveness. Before implementing the Citrix technology, training was usually done using a standard phone connection, which was inefficient because it lacked a visual element; GoToMeeting added that visual element to the training.
Because Kaulkin is in the financial services business, security is a high priority, and the online meeting security has also proven to be an important asset of GoToMeeting. The conferencing system includes password-based authentication and end-to-end encryption.

Adobe Connect Pro
Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro is another leading web conferencing product that has delivered positive results for a number of clients. The Ontario Ministry of Education uses Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro. The province’s vast education system brings with it several challenges, and Adobe helped the district overcome those obstacles. The system is used to promote Internet-based learning and host online meetings, and has dramatically changed the state of education in Ontario. For example, instructors use Acrobat Connect to bring web-based learning into the classroom, enabling teachers to teach in two classrooms at the same time, effectively doubling the number of students they can reach. Students that are not in the same room as the teacher can still interact with the rest of the class through the live chat feature. The technology makes it possible to establish online classes, which also helps to build up the remotely located schools and give them access to the same curriculum and teachers as students closer to the city.
In addition, the school district uses the technology to allow outside speakers to address classrooms and access to resources that were previously unavailable. The guest speakers host interactive presentations, and share their wisdom with thousands of students throughout the district at the same time.
Even better, the students use the technology to collaborate across classrooms and even across schools to work on various projects. For example, two elementary schools 400 miles apart collaborated on a book study project. Additional benefits include allowing students that may be inaccessible or in the hospital to participate with the classroom as well.
The technology is also used to keep staff up to speed and to offer them training and orientation. And, the school board also operates a series of virtual learning centers that accommodates adult learners and home-school students.

Cisco Systems Webex
Cisco Systems’ WebEx is one of the best known and most widely used web conferencing systems on the market. The National Bank of Indianapolis uses WebEx to allow its small IT staff to effectively service all eleven branches. The two-person IT staff needed to meet government regulations and perform the IT needs of the extended branch network, and WebEx allowed them to achieve these goals while improving overall customer service. The system eliminated the need for the IT staff to travel on-site for manual maintenance on each branch’s IT system. WebEx also helped them adhere more closely to regulations by giving them a more effective way to manage and distribute software patches and respond to security threats in the network.
WebEx met a particularly major challenge during the switchover to Daylight Savings Time. The bank’s IT system required two separate time updates, and under other circumstances the IT team would have had to shut down other projects to perform the switchover. Instead, the bank used WebEx for software distribution and patch management, and they have since fully automated critical IT functions like this. WebEx completely transformed the way the bank rolls out software updates, and saved a great deal of time and money in the process. The bank particularly appreciated the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, which allowed them to start using WebEx immediately without a long rollout period.
Internal support is also facilitated with WebEx, allowing the IT staff to resolve problems on any one of the network’s 300 computers from a remote location. IT issues can now be resolved often in a matter of minutes, and without IT staff having to travel to the branch location.
( http://www.business-software.com/web-conferencing/web-conferencing-success-stories.php )

Multiple companies in Canada and all over the world have benefited from the use of online conferencing solutions. If you feel that any of the conferencing platforms mentioned above will benefit you and your business, feel free to contact us at customersupport@reciteconferencing.com. We are happy to find a right solution just for you!

The Ultimate Commute is No Commute

2009-12-02T11:36:00.000-05:00

Teleworking is the perfect option for the shortest commute. It provides for business continuity while eliminating the commute to work. If you can perform work from home, you may be a candidate for teleworking.

In addition to reduced transportation costs, teleworking allows employees to better use the time they would have spent travelling. Companies who offer telework report that productivity is often improved because a major stress is eliminated from their employee’s schedule and workplace interruptions are reduced. When employers and employees focus on the work performed rather the work location, job satisfaction can skyrocket.

Teleworking is greenest of all commuting options, reducing the impact on the environment. It has benefits for organizations, their individual employees, and the broader communities in which we live and work.

Employer Benefits
- Increased productivity, recruitment and retention
- Less absenteeism
- Less time lost due to weather or business interruption
- Smaller carbon footprint
- Lower office and parking costs

Employee Benefits
- Flexibility improves overall quality of life
- More personal and family time
- Less stress from time spent in traffic
- Higher job satisfaction and morale
- Reduced commuting costs

Community Benefits
- Less road congestion
- Improved air quality
- Reduced impact on the environment
- More "eyes and ears" for the neighbourhood

Teleworking can be either on a part-time or full-time basis, on a fixed or flexible schedule. That’s the beauty of telework; a telework program can be designed to suit the unique needs of an organization and its employees.

Considering Telework for You or Your Workplace?
Lots of organizations allow their employees to work at home informally once in a while to finish an important project, or when weather makes travel difficult. With all the IT and communications options available today, this type of informal telework has become common. But a growing number of organizations have chosen to take teleworking a step further and implement a more structured program, with staff teleworking on a regular schedule, in order to gain more of the benefits that telework offers.

Formal telework programs are designed to offer some structure while still maintaining flexibility. A formal program includes the development of policies and agreements that provide direction to managers and their employees working from home. These programs are also easier to monitor to keep track of results and successes.

Getting Started
Teleworking is a new concept for a lot of people, teleworkers and managers alike. To roll out a successful program, either formal or informal, an employer will want to consider how a telework program supports the company’s business and organizational goals. Implementation will involve a number of considerations including training, IT/security arrangements, how to manage teleworkers and who is a suitable telework candidate.

To view this article at its source, please go to http://www.translink.ca/en/TravelSmart/Telework/Telework-Overview.aspx

Experts Reveal Why This Recession is a Great Time to Go Green

2009-11-03T09:56:00.000-05:00

By Debbie Lawes - BDC
Thursday, October 8, 2009

Cutting your energy costs can give your company a competitive advantage by improving efficiencies and your corporate image with both customers and suppliers.

It`s understandable to think this recession has put a damper on "green" or environmentally friendly business practices. Going green or staying green may be a luxury many struggling businesses simply can`t afford these days.

But while that may have been the case for past downturns, times have certainly changed. For starters, many green initiatives save companies money.

Catherine Swift, president and CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), which represents 105,000 small businesses nationwide, says she`s seen no indication from her members that saving the Earth is taking a back seat to saving the business.

"One reason is that for smaller companies, the recession hasn`t been as dire as for large firms that are driven by the stock markets. Our members are privately owned companies, and among them, we`re continuing to see a focus on environmental practices," she says.

A 2007 CFIB survey found that energy conservation ranked as the second most important environmental issue after recycling of materials, with 83% of its members having already implemented energy conservation changes. While about half of respondents said cost savings was a factor in making changes, 81% said they were motivated by their own personal views. Swift says that trend appears to be holding.

"These companies are motivated primarily by the owner`s personal views about the importance of protecting the environment for future generations. Embracing environmental practices isn`t something you usually have to convince them to do," says Swift.

Of course, it`s always nice if a company can help the environment and its bottom line at the same time. A quick Google search will turn up thousands of web pages on how companies of all sizes can be both green and profitable.

First, there`s the low-hanging fruit, things like printing on both sides of paper, recycling, switching to energy-efficient light bulbs, turning down the thermostat and shutting off idle office equipment. Natural Step Canada (www.naturalstep.org) has a free sustainability toolkit that can be downloaded from their website. Another helpful resource is a book authored by Bob Willard entitled "The Business Case for Sustainability".

According to Willard, integrating sustainability strategies can increase profits up to 38% for large companies and 66% for small- or medium-sized companies over a five-year period. A lot of these savings can be achieved by reducing energy costs.

"If your energy costs are high, you certainly have an incentive to reduce them," says Michel Bergeron, Vice President, Corporate Relations at the Business Development Bank of Canada. "But even if they aren`t high, cutting your energy costs can give your company a competitive advantage by improving efficiencies and your corporate image with both customers and suppliers."

Tax credits and incentives for energy efficiency and other green incentives are being pushed from Ottawa all the way down to local municipalities. Most utilities now offer businesses incentives to reduce energy use. Hydro Quebec, for example, offers financial assistance for electricity-saving industrial equipment, systems or processes.

Keeping ahead of the law and public opinion
Lower operational costs aren`t the only reason to reduce energy use. All levels of government, including local, are introducing laws and regulations that will require companies to reduce waste and embrace more sustainable business practices.

For example, once cap and trade rules become more widespread, Bergeron said companies will need to be careful about how much carbon they produce.

"Reducing your energy use – and thus, your carbon footprint – should be part of any business plan. You can start with something as simple as reducing your corporate travel by using inexpensive videoconferencing technologies like Skype," he says. "But the most important building block should be an energy efficiency audit of your workplace."

Business owners that act early will find themselves at a competitive advantage when new rules are implemented.

"At some point, the consideration of environmental and social issues will be mandated, so for business this becomes a central risk factor. It also becomes an opportunity. Companies shouldn`t wait until the economy picks up," says Melissa Shin, managing editor of Corporate Knights, a magazine focusing on corporate responsibility.

Attracting a green workforce
Companies that don`t embrace environmental practices could also find themselves as a competitive disadvantage in attracting young, skilled employees. Today`s young workers are more environmentally aware than previous generations, and they`re bringing those values into their workplaces.

"BDC, for example, is heavily paper-based and this becomes an irritant for our younger employees who view paper as a waste of resources," says Bergeron. "They`re putting pressure on us to move more quickly to change our ways, and we are."

Companies that incorporate environmental responsibility into their mandate will also tend to have more loyal employees who are more willing to make sacrifices, if needed, during a recession. "Embracing environmental and socially sustainable practices is a great way to retain your staff in an economic downturn," says Shin.

10 Top Reasons Why a Business Should Be Using Conferencing Services

2009-10-09T12:27:00.006-04:00

1. It completely eliminates geographic disparity
This principle can apply to anybody doing business anywhere. You can instantly meet with people in your organization, partners, clients, or prospective customers. With products like Reservationless 800 Conferencing, you can e-mail, text or IM a number and access code from your Blackberry or other PDA and participants can join instantly. Proximity to multiple, geographically-diverse clients become instantaneous.

2. It improves productivity in research and development
This principle applies to persons heading R&D in IT, biotech, physical science, product development, marketing, or any other area. The widespread introduction of conferencing and collaboration tools over the past few years has helped organizations better improve research and development among team members. For instance, web conferencing software has allowed company employees in separate locations to collaborate on projects in real-time, greatly boosting operational efficiency. Countless organizations have benefited from this technology and seen time-to-market improve, resulting in competitive advantages not enjoyed before, reduced R&D costs, and quicker ROI.

3. It improves investor relations
This principle applies to any and all CFO’s and CIO’s. All public companies are scrutinized in their quarterly conference call and earnings report. When the call does not go seamlessly, it makes a negative impression on the operational aptitude of the company giving the presentation. Investors think, “What type of company has an error-prone conference call?”
The unfortunate reality is that some companies do botch the investor call, whether having not enough seats/bridges open or a complete lack of moderation/order. Often, they utilize products not geared for such large audiences and/or products that don’t support the unique needs of such an important call. The top conferencing providers have solutions geared toward investor and enterprise-level calls, and a wide variety of solutions exist to accommodate such needs and eliminate highly-visible public disasters.

4. It boosts sales
This principle applies to any sales VP’s, Regional Directors, or Area Managers. Any company with multiple offices needs to have management tools in place to meet with the branch subordinates on a regular basis. As a former sales manager, I learned the mantra “inspect what you expect” very early in my career. Having regularly scheduled calls with subordinates will help prepare the organization better and teach a culture of being prepared and organized. It will also keep senior management informed on the sales activities as they are happening, instead of hearing about things in retrospect. This allows the senior sales executive the chance to act on accounts before they are possibly lost, like stepping in and offering better pricing, terms, or service level guarantees. The best organization leaders I have ever worked for personally made it a point to keep in regular contact with the field sales organization, and it showed in the results.

5. It improves corporate communication
This principle applies and directly affects everybody in an organization. Have you ever worked in an organization where you felt like corporate was a world away? Perhaps you do now, as I did at one time. The biggest difference between companies that grow successfully and those that do not is not being like-minded in goals and spirit across the organization. The most successful ones (like Google) convey a sense of togetherness and corporate culture that is inspired from a set of values, such as “leadership”, “customer-centric”, “caring”, etc….. The organizations that keep their main cultural values at the forefront do so by regularly communicating with their remote and regional offices. Audio conferencing and web conferencing are two of the simple ways to accomplish this high priority.

6. It speeds training and education
This principle applies to any C-Level who has a training requirement in their company. Organizations spend a lot of money getting new employees trained on company and industry information, internal procedures policies and methodologies. Many industries, such as education, legal, real estate, technology, manufacturing, and accounting, have initiatives that require constant training in order to maintain current standards in the respective industry. Audio and web conferencing are the dominant training tools to accomplish any organization’s e-learning initiative. Companies that utilize this technology save thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, in hard-dollars savings from travel, accommodations, meals and gratuities, and air-fare. The often-overlooked aspect of savings in using conferencing products for e-learning is that it is a definite boost in productivity. Instead of losing several hours (at best) with flight time, your employee is able to return to work instantly.
The company that utilizes these communications tools effectively trains their workforce more efficiently, save money, and boost productivity at the same time.

7. It improves your internal marketing initiative
This principle applies to Chief Marketing Officers and VP’s of Sales. Companies that can roll out new products in unison to a geographically disparate workforce have a greater chance of success. The ability to introduce new offerings in a clear, concise manner and in a positive fashion can boost sales’ attitudes about the new product or direction. In addition, the marketing message is the most important differentiator in our highly competitive society. The roll-out is the marketing organization’s best time to convey those vitally important differentiators to the internal sales team as most buyers want to know “what is in it for me”. Differentiators bridge that gap to the prospect and help the sales team close deals.
And for companies relying on an indirect channel, frequent communication is of paramount importance when driving productivity. Effective presentation done in an entertaining way is the best method to get your channel partners pushing your product and not your competitors.

8. It improves the external marketing initiative
This principle applies the direct and indirect field sales force and client retention specialists/account managers. Similar to the internal benefits listed above, the same benefits apply to external customers. When you roll out new products or services, it is easier to demonstrate it in a clear and concise manner. Audio and web conferencing solutions let a sales force introduce new offerings easily without geographic limitation. Retention and service personnel within a company can use the same conferencing and collaboration tools to introduce new products, conduct account reviews, and keep connected with vital decision-makers in an organization. Since sales is all about relationships, keeping those relationships active is vital to protect your customer base and maintaining contact with the most important positions is the key.

9. It offers mobile proximity
This principle applies to anybody with a PDA or cell phone. While it is true that cell phones often can cause a lot of static when they participate in audio conferences, sometimes the urgency of the call overtakes the immediate need for everything to be 100%. Most conferencing providers today offer mobile solutions that allow web features to be accessed from PDA’s, so that you don’t miss any aspect of the call that is taking place at that moment.

10. It will save your company money, boost productivity and define your corporate culture
This principle benefits everybody. Whether you measure by hard dollar savings in travel, meals, accommodations, entertainment, or soft dollar savings in areas like boosted productivity, increased sales, and better messaging, your organization will save money.

So with these 10 reasons, you may be able to see other applications for a conferencing solution and how it could positively impact your organization.

About the Author:
Eric Blaier is the founder of Integrated Business Services, Inc, an Atlanta-based telecommunications consulting firm. He has worked in IT sales and sales management for over 17 years and has worked for companies such as Allnet Communications, Allegiance Telecom and AT&T. His client roster includes numerous Fortune 500 clients in the healthcare, finance, technology, consumer goods, and consumer services sectors.
He can be reached at www.integratedbusinessservices.net or sales@integratedbusinessservices.net

Home Warriors

2009-09-28T11:20:00.001-04:00

Telecommuting is becoming increasingly common as more companies start to get comfortable with it. Unfortunately, problems such as difficulty maintaining work-life balance, feeling of isolation, and a lack of face-to-face contact with fellow workers begin to affect telecommuters' performance over time. The spread of new technology such as videoconferencing helps companies to partially solve these types of problems.

Jul 25th 2008
From Economist.com

Telecommuters need more than e-mail and a broadband connection

THE best thing about being a foreign correspondent is not having to commute to the office every day, attend dreary meetings, dress soberly, and generally get distracted from the nitty-gritty of doing the job. The worst thing is being out of touch with colleagues at head office, with little say over how your stories are treated. But if you can handle the patchy feedback and total lack of control, the freedom pays dividends in productivity and sheer job satisfaction.

Being one of the most portable jobs on the planet, journalism provides a daily reminder that work is something you do, not some place you go to. For the past quarter of a century, your correspondent has smirked about the time and energy he’s saved through not having to travel to work.

When he commuted back in the 1970s, he spent 80 minutes a day strap-hanging on trains and buses, and hoofing it in between. On the odd times he drove, it took an hour and at least a gallon of petrol a day. By telecommuting, he reckons he’s saved the planet some 2.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide for each of the past 25 years.

He’s not alone. Gartner Dataquest, a market-research company, reckons one in four employees in America worked from home for at least one day a week last year. Over half of all businesses in the United States now allow some form of telecommuting. European employers are further ahead still.

However, it’s what’s not being done that’s even more interesting. One study published earlier this year reckoned 33m Americans have jobs that could be done from home. If all of them started to telecommute instead of drive to work, oil imports would drop by over a quarter, and carbon emissions would fall by 67m metric tonnes a year. In terms of hours saved, each telecommuter would get the equivalent of an extra 25 working days of holiday per year.

The telecommuting boom has been driven in part by the rapid penetration of broadband in the home, easier and cheaper forms of IP telephony, more robust VPN (virtual private network) software, plus a new generation of powerful laptops that are true desktop replacements. Actually, that “technological pull” has existed for quite a while. What’s different today is that, complementing it, there’s now an “economic push” for telecommuting from business itself.

To gain an edge over the competition, firms have begun belatedly to realise how much more agile they must quickly become. Success, it’s now understood, goes to those that can genuinely reduce costs, recruit and retain the best employees, and ensure business continuity when disaster strikes.

A sure-fire way of saving money is to reduce the amount of office space and services—generally reckoned to be around $10,000 per employee annually. Telecommuting doesn’t remove all those overheads at a stroke, but it can easily halve them.

Surprisingly, firms also find that telecommuting can reduce their communications costs. That’s because a broadband connection to the home—and telecommuting is impossible without one—can always be configured as a second (essentially free) voice line as well as a high-speed data connection. That saves firms from having to reimburse employees for making business calls at high residential rates.

The other big saving comes from reducing labour costs. Employers find they can often recruit cheaper and better employees as telecommuters by going outside their normal catchment areas. An added bonus is that teleworkers don’t incur relocation expenses.

There are productivity benefits, too. Telecommuters at American Express, for instance, are reckoned to generate over 40% more business than their office-bound colleagues. British Telecom’s 9,000 teleworkers are apparently 30% more productive than their office counterparts.

That may be just the extra hours they put in. Telecommuters are famous for clocking on much earlier and clocking off far later than their office counterparts.

But as experience with telecommuting has accumulated, doubts about some of its reputed benefits have begun to surface. For instance, Korn/Ferry, a recruiting firm based in Los Angeles, finds the careers of telecommuters are believed to stagnate—as out-of-sight translates into out-of-mind.

The unhappiness is mutual. Half the bosses in the Korn/Ferry study felt the work done by remote employees suffered over time through lack of face-to-face contact with fellow workers. With 40% of its employees working away from the office every day, IBM has been alarmed enough to do some soul-searching.

Research it commissioned recently from Jay Mulki, a marketing expert at Northeastern University’s business school, points to two particular challenges that need addressing—the feeling of isolation and the difficulty of achieving a healthy work/life balance when employees operate from home. “When face-to-face communication isn’t possible,” says Mr Mulki, “teleworkers need a substitute—and voice-mail isn’t it.”

Technology, it seems, is both the problem and the solution. What most telecommuters rely on—e-mail, voice-mail, conference calls and instant messaging, plus a broadband-connected computer—will do the job, but only just. Without some form of “telepresence”, remote workers tapping away at their keyboards in their pyjamas will always be struggling in the dark.

The good news is that the cost of providing telepresence—visual and aural feedback that makes remote users feel they are all in the same room together, having personal conversations—has started to come down quite steeply.

Depending on the number of screens used, these high-definition video teleconferencing systems that deliver life-size images of the participants used to cost $500,000 or more per room. Cisco Systems, a network equipment maker based in San Jose, California, is now selling a personal telepresence system for $33,900.

That’s still big money by any measure. But with petrol at $5 a gallon today (and probably double that in a decade’s time), think of the savings to be made. Cisco reckons to have saved $70m in travel expenses in 2007 alone from the 200 telepresence systems it’s installed in its remote offices over the past few years.

And now a small start-up called LifeSize Communications in Austin, Texas, has introduced a personal teleconferencing system for $6,000. It lacks some of the bells and whistles that more professional systems offer. But it’s more than enough for a foreign correspondent filing stories from his bedroom.

To view this article at the source, please go to
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11819706

Teleworking - Business Continuity Opportunities and Threats

2009-09-16T11:24:00.000-04:00

By David Honour

IDC issued a report recently in which it predicted that the worldwide mobile worker population will increase from more than 650 million worldwide in 2004, to more than 850 million in 2009, representing more than one-quarter of the global workforce. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) currently has the largest total number of mobile workers, followed by the United States and Western Europe. However, in percentage terms, the United States has the most mobile workers in its workforce. By 2009, 70 percent of the US workforce are expected to be mobile.

Teleworking presents advantages to business continuity managers, in that the distributed nature of the workforce provides inherent resiliency. Teleworking can enable continuity of business during mundane business interruption incidents, such as snowstorms or traffic problems preventing staff being able to travel into a central office; and teleworking can protect against more unusual and esoteric threats. For example, it reduces the risk of losing a cohort of critical members of staff due to a single geographical incident or disaster; and offers a business continuity solution to wide area incidents such as pandemic influenza; or a CBRN-based terrorist attack.

In the US, TelCoa has been very active recently in promoting teleworking as a business continuity strategy. TelCoa suggests that companies should follow certain guidelines to facilitate the implementation of telework programs. These are:

• Determine who in your organisation is in a position to perform their duties from home. This would include workers who spend the majority of their time on the computer and/or phone. Further, modify work activities so they can be carried out from home; for instance, this may mean digitising many more of your records and information.

• Coordinate with your IT departments to verify that these workers have a secure means to remotely access the corporate network(s).

• Develop and coordinate with managers an immediate plan to train workers on the basics of working from home and how a telework strategy promotes your organisation’s objectives and business continuity.

• As soon as a plan is in place, test your plan, evaluate it, adjust and refine it as necessary and test it again and again until telework becomes a part of your working culture.

• Develop a two way notification system to let your staff know when your emergency telework program is in effect and so they can report their whereabouts and receive instructions and support.

As well as advantages, teleworking also offers significant information security challenges. This issue has been highlighted by Internet security company SonicWALL, which has expressed fears that the move towards teleworking could result in a dramatic increase in corporate security breaches. To stay safe, SonicWALL recommends that businesses install a VPN and take the following actions:

• Isolate the telecommuter connection - where the teleworker unit is on a shared network at home it should not be possible for the VPN tunnel to be accessible to anyone else on the home network.

• Enforce network protection at the telecommuter site - companies should consider giving teleworkers security levels at home that comply with the basic minimum corporate standards thereby enforcing a multi-layered defence mechanism that incorporates firewall, anti-virus, content filtering and authentication.

• Scale the telecommuting network infrastructure - the majority of enterprises will require VPN connections with many different users so it is important that the solution should be scalable to allow security measures to be deployed rapidly via a web browser.

• Manage telecommuting security policies - any solution must be capable of being managed remotely by the company's service professionals so that the VPN links remain in full control of the organisation at all times.

• Perform stateful inspection - where malicious attacks are detected at the application layer rather than at operating system level.

• Comply with international and local information security standards.

British Telecommunications (BT) reiterates the need to look carefully at security issues when establishing a teleworking policy. BT recently highlighted the security issues raised in a Computer Weekly survey, which found that more than half of the UK SMEs surveyed use at least three examples of wireless technology for mobile and teleworking. While welcoming the trend, BT warns companies to make sure that they have the appropriate training, security, business continuity and flexible working policies in place, rather than allowing the ad-hoc and uncontrolled development of teleworking. However, the survey results show that the latter is the norm in many businesses, with less than 50 percent of small businesses giving staff training on how to use mobile technologies securely. Additionally, more than 60 per cent of SMEs do not have a formal policy on flexible working and teleworking.

Bill Murphy, managing director of BT Business, says: “It is essential for any organisation introducing wireless technology to take steps to safeguard fundamental systems such as phone and data networks. The threat posed by viruses, hackers and fraudsters affects every organisation – both large and small. For an organisation to fully realise the benefits of any investment in wireless technology, it is absolutely crucial to assess and address all security issues as part of comprehensive business continuity plans.”

As well as increasing the information security threats to organisations, mobile working makes communications continuity an ever more important issue. The communications network becomes the lifeline, not just between the company and its customers and suppliers, but also now sits at the very heart of day-to-day business processes. If communications network fails, employees can not work for long. Vital data becomes unavailable and team working becomes impossible. Whereas ten years ago many businesses could operate for many hours, or even days, without access to telecommunications services, today’s business grinds to a halt much more quickly. And the greater the investment in teleworking, the greater the impact communications outages have. The need for true communications high availability solutions is now a genuine one.

To view this article at its source, please visit http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0275.htm

Telecommuting

2009-07-13T14:03:00.000-04:00

Teleworking is a relatively new and cost-effective practice. Unfortunately, telecommuters have been criticized for being less productive, more easily distracted and less committed. However, a recent study in The Journal of Applied Psychology has proved the opposite!

Telecommuting is a win-win situation, study finds

Jennifer Newman and Darryl Grigg, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, February 16, 2008

Working from home, or "telecommuting," is becoming more commonplace and popular among workers as technological advancements allow for it.

But is everyone a fan?

The conventional wisdom is that allowing people to work from home can hurt business. Telecommuters may be less productive, more inclined to quit and perform less well than workers at the office. Employers may be concerned that at-home workers are more easily distracted by family and social obligations and opportunities, perhaps doing less in a day and negatively affecting business results.

Critics also maintain that letting employees work from home should be avoided since it damages staff chances for promotion, undermines supervisor-subordinate relationships and increases family conflict. When staff aren't in the office, they appear to be less loyal and committed as a result. This damages their reputations as promotion-ready and they are sidelined.

Relationships with supervisors are supposed to suffer under these arrangements as well. Managers rely on observing staff to evaluate their performance. When the manager can't see what staff are doing, distrust could develop, causing supervisors to monitor employees more closely. They may implicitly suspect that the worker is not pulling his or her weight by hiding out at home.

Families could suffer more under telecommuting arrangements since technology reduces boundaries between work and family. People find their loved one constantly working and unavailable, see no downtime for the telecommuter and as a result conflict increases.

Right?

Not according to a recent study in The Journal of Applied Psychology, which firmly debunks these claims. Ravi Gajendran and David Harrison at the Department of Management and Organization with Pennsylvania State University, conducted an extensive review of 46 studies on the subject featuring 12,883 employees. Their results show that working from home is good for business and for staff.

The researchers identified seven positive results of working at home:

INCREASED CONTROL

A key positive aspect of telecommuting is the opportunity for workers to have maximum control over their work and work environment. Staff have control over when they take breaks, what they wear to work and the layout of their office space. They can make individualized decor choices, alter the ventilation to their liking, change the lighting or even include their own music. They get to decide when and how they do their job and schedule their time accordingly. As long as the work gets done, staff are free to choose what they do and when.

INCREASED WORK/FAMILY BALANCE

When staff can decide when they are going to work and what particular tasks they will work on, they are afforded the opportunity to integrate work and family obligations. This means they can make work and family schedules fit together. Staff can plan uninterrupted work time as well as catering to family needs. Some workers find that they have a room set aside for an office and thereby reduce disruptions. Telecommuting reduces time spent in traffic and can ostensibly increase the number of hours telecommuting staff work. Taking time to take a child to a sport or pick up groceries can be scheduled into the day along with work "to-do's". Telecommuting reduces the tension that can exist between doing one's job and meeting family obligations.

IMPROVED SUPERVISOR-STAFF RELATIONSHIPS

The researchers found that telecommuting had a positive effect on supervisor-staff relationships. They speculated that the reason for this is that both parties make an extra effort to stay in touch when staff work from home. Supervisors who have less opportunity to see home-based staff, may contact them more and have longer and better quality conversations. Staff may also seek the supervisor out to update him or her regularly. When supervision occurs in the office environment it may be more casual and on a "catch-as-catch-can" basis. Telecommuting may mean supervisor and subordinate see each other less, but the quality of their contact may increase.

REDUCED STRESS

Not having to rush to work through commuter traffic, spend extra money on lunch and business attire or worry about being late can reduce stress. Coupled with improved supervisor-staff relationships and less tension at home, working from home causes a reduction in common irritants, subtle pressures and concerns that other workers find pervasive.

INCREASED JOB SATISFACTION

Workers who have increased control over their work, who can attend to their familial obligations and experience autonomy are more satisfied and less likely to quit their jobs. Being provided with the means to take charge of their own schedule and having choice is key to ensuring that workers are satisfied. Being given the option to work at home also promotes a sense of loyalty to the organization. Staff feel cared about and their concerns taken seriously when they are given the option of alternate work arrangements. Increasing staff satisfaction benefits businesses hoping to attract and retain talent. Job hunters talk to employees and former employees, gleaning important information about the company and its policies. Knowing that a prospective employer is flexible and recognizes the needs of its workers is attractive to prospective employees.

WORKER RETENTION

Staff who are ready to quit their jobs often cite tensions between work and family, lack of employer flexibility and difficult supervisors as reasons for their desire to leave. Some employers introduce flexible work arrangements to induce overwhelmed or stressed workers to stay. By finding a way for an employee to do their job and lower their stress, companies keep valued, experienced people on the payroll. Working from home is attractive to many and being offered that choice, can mean the difference between staying with an employer or looking for another job. People stay at jobs where they feel respected, trusted and allowed to complete tasks in ways that get the job done and suit the individual. Working from home can provide this kind of allure since the trust and autonomy implied by giving an employee the option to telecommute increases commitment to the company.

IMPROVED PRODUCTIVITY AND CAREER PROSPECTS

Contrary to those who oppose work-at-home arrangements, productivity increases in these scenarios. Staff are less distracted and when supervisors examine objectively what actually gets done, they note that at-home workers deliver. The researchers debunked the concern that not being seen in the office was considered career limiting. Participants in the studies they reviewed did not consider their work arrangement a liability and when taken with improved supervisor-staff relations and increased productivity, the at-home work arrangement may help those who wish to advance in their careers.

Gajendran and Harrison report that telecommuting is largely beneficial for companies and workers. But they warn that care needs to be taken to nurture at-home worker relationships with their co-workers. These relationships can suffer the most from the telecommuting work arrangement.

Ensuring that employees have time together, some face-to-face meetings or social gatherings is helpful to reduce isolation and encourage co-worker camaraderie.

- Dr. Jennifer Newman and Dr. Darryl Grigg are registered psychologists and directors of Newman & Grigg Psychological and Consulting Services Ltd., a Vancouver-based corporate training and development partnership. Identifying information in cases cited has been changed to protect confidentiality. They can be contacted at: sunmail@newmangrigg.com

Computing Sustainability

2009-06-05T11:21:00.000-04:00

Information and communications technology is always one of the first industries to blame for an excessive energy consumption and emissions. However, recent studies have shown that ICT can be used to reduce emissions if the necessary technical standards are implemented...

Computing Sustainability
June 19th 2008
From The Economist print edition

How computers can help to cut carbon emissions

HOW much computing can mankind afford? That is a question the computer and telecoms industries hate to hear. They do not see themselves in the same dirty league as airlines or carmakers, sources of huge amounts of carbon dioxide, but instead as part of the solution. In a pre-emptive strike, a group of technology firms calling itself the Global eSustainability Initiative (GeSI) has joined the Climate Group, a non-profit environmental club, to examine how information and communications technologies (ICT) affect climate change. Their research, released on June 20th, confirms that ICT could in fact do much to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions—but not in the way you might think.

When it comes to emissions, ICT is on a par with aviation. In 2007, according to the report, the world's electronic gear (including PCs, their peripherals, telecoms networks and devices, and the warehouses of corporate machines known as data centres) produced 830m tonnes of CO2—about 2% of total emissions from human activity. Even with technology that uses energy more sparingly, this is expected to grow to 1.4 billion tonnes by 2020. Although PCs, mobile phones and networks will account for most (56%) of this, emissions from data centres will grow the fastest.

Yet these numbers look much less frightening if, in the words of the study, ICT's “enabling effect” is taken into account. The study calculates that ICT could help to reduce emissions in other industries by 7.8 billion tonnes by 2020, or five times ICT's own footprint. Perhaps the best-known of these enabling effects is to replace face-to-face meetings, which require carbon-belching air travel, with low-emission alternatives such as videoconferencing. John Chambers, the boss of Cisco, a big maker of network equipment, says his company has reduced its carbon footprint by 11% by using its own “telepresence” gear. It also means higher productivity and reduced “wear and tear” on executives, he adds.

But reducing transport emissions using technologies such as videoconferencing and teleworking turn out to be some of the smaller enabling effects—saving a potential 140m and 220m tonnes of CO2 a year in 2020 respectively (see chart). Using computers to improve logistics (for example, by planning the routes of delivery vehicles more efficiently) could save 1.5 billion tonnes; using data networking inside a “smart” electrical grid to manage demand and reduce unnecessary energy consumption could save 2 billion tonnes; and computer-enabled “smart buildings”, in which lighting and ventilation systems turn themselves off if nobody is around, could save 1.7 billion tonnes.

None of this will be easy. The industry can supply the hardware and software, but the bigger problem is the “wetware”—people, economics and politics. The right skills are often scarce. Incentives are lacking for businesses to invest in carbon-reducing technology. There need to be new technical standards. For transport, power grids and buildings to become more efficient, there must be rules on how, for instance, refrigerators should talk to electricity meters, and thermostats to heating systems. But the internet shows that when common standards are agreed on in an industry, great things can happen. The technology industry's contribution to tackling climate change may come from its standards bodies as much as its clever gizmos.

A Guide to Business Continuity Planning

2009-06-05T09:50:00.000-04:00

Risk management has become extremely important and mission-critical in the business world. Business Continuity planning has emerged as a proactive initiative across all business sectors. We came across this article at the Public Safety Canada web site. It outlines the benefits as well as the critical steps involved in the process of business continuity planning.

A Guide to Business Continuity Planning
This publication provides a summary and general guidelines for business continuity planning (BCP).

While governments, not-for-profit institutions, and non-governmental organizations also deliver critical services, private organizations must continuously deliver products and services to satisfy shareholders and to survive. Although they differ in goals and functions, BCP can be applied by all organizations.

Changes in the world of business continuity planning
Business continuity planning versus business resumption planning and disaster recovery planning
A Business Resumption Plan describes how to resume business after a disruption. A Disaster Recovery Plan deals with recovering Information Technology (IT) assets after a disastrous interruption. Both imply a stoppage in critical operations and are reactive.

Recognizing that some services or products must be continuously delivered without interruption, there has been a shift from Business Resumption Planning to Business Continuity Planning.

A business continuity plan enables critical services or products to be continually delivered to clients. Instead of focusing on resuming a business after critical operations have ceased, or recovering after a disaster, a business continuity plan endeavors to ensure that critical operations continue to be available.

The effects of September 11, 2001
September 11, 2001 demonstrated that although high impact, low probability events could occur, recovery is possible. Even though buildings were destroyed and blocks of Manhattan were affected, businesses and institutions with good continuity plans survived.

The lessons learned include:

- plans must be updated and tested frequently;
- all types of threats must be considered;
- dependencies and interdependencies should be carefully analyzed;
- key personnel may be unavailable;
- telecommunications are essential;
- alternate sites for IT backup should not be situated close to the primary site;
- employee support (counselling) is important;
- copies of plans should be stored at a secure off-site location;
- sizable security perimeters may surround the scene of incidents involving national security or law enforcement, and can impede personnel from returning to buildings;
- despite shortcomings, Business Continuity Plans in place pre September 11 were indispensable to the continuity effort; and
- increased uncertainty (following a high impact disruption such as terrorism) may lengthen time until operations are normalized.

Emerging issues
Continuous Service Delivery Assurance (CSDA) is a commitment to continuous delivery of critical services that avoids immediate severe disruption to an organization. A BCP includes both risk evaluation, management and control and effective plans, measures and arrangements for business continuity.

Continuous risk management lowers the risk of disruption and assesses the potential impacts of disruptions when they occur. An example would be the business impact analysis component of a BCP program.

What is business continuity planning?
Critical services or products are those that must be delivered to ensure survival, avoid causing injury, and meet legal or other obligations of an organization. Business Continuity Planning is a proactive planning process that ensures critical services or products are delivered during a disruption.

A Business Continuity Plan includes:

- Plans, measures and arrangements to ensure the continuous delivery of critical services and products, which permits the organization to recover its facility, data and assets.

- Identification of necessary resources to support business continuity, including personnel, information, equipment, financial allocations, legal counsel, infrastructure protection and accommodations.

Having a BCP enhances an organization's image with employees, shareholders and customers by demonstrating a proactive attitude. Additional benefits include improvement in overall organizational efficiency and identifying the relationship of assets and human and financial resources to critical services and deliverables.

Why is business continuity planning important
Every organization is at risk from potential disasters that include:

- Natural disasters such as tornadoes, floods, blizzards, earthquakes and fire
- Accidents
- Sabotage
- Power and energy disruptions
- Communications, transportation, safety and service sector failure
- Environmental disasters such as pollution and hazardous materials spills
- Cyber attacks and hacker activity.
- Creating and maintaining a BCP helps ensure that an institution has the resources and information needed to deal with these emergencies.

Creating a business continuity plan
A BCP typically includes five sections:

1. BCP Governance
2. Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
3. Plans, measures, and arrangements for business continuity
4. Readiness procedures
5. Quality assurance techniques (exercises, maintenance and auditing)

Establish control
A BCP contains a governance structure often in the form of a committee that will ensure senior management commitments and define senior management roles and responsibilities.

The BCP senior management committee is responsible for the oversight, initiation, planning, approval, testing and audit of the BCP. It also implements the BCP, coordinates activities, approves the BIA survey, oversees the creation of continuity plans and reviews the results of quality assurance activities.

Senior managers or a BCP Committee would normally:

- approve the governance structure;
- clarify their roles, and those of participants in the program;
- oversee the creation of a list of appropriate committees, working groups and teams to develop and execute the plan;
- provide strategic direction and communicate essential messages;
- approve the results of the BIA;
- review the critical services and products that have been identified;
- approve the continuity plans and arrangement;
- monitor quality assurance activities; and
- resolve conflicting interests and priorities.
This BCP committee is normally comprised of the following members:

- Executive sponsor has overall responsibility for the BCP committee; elicits senior management's support and direction; and ensures that adequate funding is available for the BCP program.
- BCP Coordinator secures senior management's support; estimates funding requirements; develops BCP policy; coordinates and oversees the BIA process; ensures effective participant input; coordinates and oversees the development of plans and arrangements for business continuity; establishes working groups and teams and defines their responsibilities; coordinates appropriate training; and provides for regular review, testing and audit of the BCP.
- Security Officer works with the coordinator to ensure that all aspects of the BCP meet the security requirements of the organization.
- Chief Information Officer (CIO) cooperates closely with the BCP coordinator and IT specialists to plan for effective and harmonized continuity.
- Business unit representatives provide input, and assist in performing and analyzing the results of the business impact analysis.
The BCP committee is commonly co-chaired by the executive sponsor and the coordinator.

Business impact analysis
The purpose of the BIA is to identify the organization's mandate and critical services or products; rank the order of priority of services or products for continuous delivery or rapid recovery; and identify internal and external impacts of disruptions.

Identify the mandate and critical aspects of an organization
This step determines what goods or services it must be delivered. Information can be obtained from the mission statement of the organization, and legal requirements for delivering specific services and products.

Prioritize critical services or products
Once the critical services or products are identified, they must be prioritized based on minimum acceptable delivery levels and the maximum period of time the service can be down before severe damage to the organization results. To determine the ranking of critical services, information is required to determine impact of a disruption to service delivery, loss of revenue, additional expenses and intangible losses.

Identify impacts of disruptions
The impact of a disruption to a critical service or business product determines how long the organization could function without the service or product, and how long clients would accept its unavailability. It will be necessary to determine the time period that a service or product could be unavailable before severe impact is felt.

Identify areas of potential revenue loss
To determine the loss of revenue, it is necessary to determine which processes and functions that support service or product delivery are involved with the creation of revenue. If these processes and functions are not performed, is revenue lost? How much? If services or goods cannot be provided, would the organization lose revenue? If so, how much revenue, and for what length of time? If clients cannot access certain services or products would they then to go to another provider, resulting in further loss of revenue?

Identify additional expenses
If a business function or process is inoperable, how long would it take before additional expenses would start to add up? How long could the function be unavailable before extra personnel would have to be hired? Would fines or penalties from breaches of legal responsibilities, agreements, or governmental regulations be an issue, and if so, what are the penalties?

Identify intangible losses
Estimates are required to determine the approximate cost of the loss of consumer and investor confidence, damage to reputation, loss of competitiveness, reduced market share, and violation of laws and regulations. Loss of image or reputation is especially important for public institutions as they are often perceived as having higher standards.

Insurance requirements
Since few organizations can afford to pay the full costs of a recovery; having insurance ensures that recovery is fully or partially financed.

When considering insurance options, decide what threats to cover. It is important to use the BIA to help decide both what needs insurance coverage, and the corresponding level of coverage. Some aspects of an operation may be overinsured, or underinsured. Minimize the possibility of overlooking a scenario, and to ensure coverage for all eventualities.

Document the level of coverage of your institutional policy, and examine the policy for uninsured areas and non specified levels of coverage. Property insurance may not cover all perils (steam explosion, water damage, and damage from excessive ice and snow not removed by the owner). Coverage for such eventualities is available as an extension in the policy.

When submitting a claim, or talking to an adjustor, clear communication and understanding is important. Ensure that the adjustor understands the expected full recovery time when documenting losses. The burden of proof when making claims lies with the policyholder and requires valid and accurate documentation.

Include an expert or an insurance team when developing the response plan.

Ranking
Once all relevant information has been collected and assembled, rankings for the critical business services or products can be produced. Ranking is based on the potential loss of revenue, time of recovery and severity of impact a disruption would cause. Minimum service levels and maximum allowable downtimes are then determined.

Identify dependencies
It is important to identify the internal and external dependencies of critical services or products, since service delivery relies on those dependencies.

Internal dependencies include employee availability, corporate assets such as equipment, facilities, computer applications, data, tools, vehicles, and support services such as finance, human resources, security and information technology support.

External dependencies include suppliers, any external corporate assets such as equipment, facilities, computer applications, data, tools, vehicles, and any external support services such as facility management, utilities, communications, transportation, finance institutions, insurance providers, government services, legal services, and health and safety service.

Plans for business continuity
This step consists of the preparation of detailed response/recovery plans and arrangements to ensure continuity. These plans and arrangements detail the ways and means to ensure critical services and products are delivered at a minimum service levels within tolerable down times. Continuity plans should be made for each critical service or product.

Mitigating threats and risks
Threats and risks are identified in the BIA or in a full-threat-and-risk assessment. Moderating risk is an ongoing process, and should be performed even when the BCP is not activated. For example, if an organization requires electricity for production, the risk of a short term power outage can be mitigated by installing stand-by generators.

Another example would be an organization that relies on internal and external telecommunications to function effectively. Communications failures can be minimized by using alternate communications networks, or installing redundant systems.

Analyze current recovery capabilities
Consider recovery arrangements the organization already has in place, and their continued applicability. Include them in the BCP if they are relevant.

Create continuity plans
Plans for the continuity of services and products are based on the results of the BIA. Ensure that plans are made for increasing levels of severity of impact from a disruption. For example, if limited flooding occurs beside an organization's building, sand bagging may be used in response. If water rises to the first floor, work could be moved to another company building or higher in the same building. If the flooding is severe, the relocation of critical parts of the business to another area until flooding subsides may be the best option.

Another example would be a company that uses paper forms to keep track of inventory until computers or servers are repaired, or electrical service is restored. For other institutions, such as large financial firms, any computer disruptions may be unacceptable, and an alternate site and data replication technology must be used.

The risks and benefits of each possible option for the plan should be considered, keeping cost, flexibility and probable disruption scenarios in mind. For each critical service or product, choose the most realistic and effective options when creating the overall plan.

Response preparation
Proper response to a crisis for the organization requires teams to lead and support recovery and response operations. Team members should be selected from trained and experienced personnel who are knowledgeable about their responsibilities.

The number and scope of teams will vary depending on organization's size, function and structure, and can include:

- Command and Control Teams that include a Crisis Management Team, and a Response, Continuation or Recovery Management Team.
- Task Oriented Teams that include an Alternate Site Coordination Team, Contracting and Procurement Team, Damage Assessment and Salvage Team, Finance and Accounting Team, Hazardous Materials Team, Insurance Team, Legal Issues Team, Telecommunications/ Alternate Communications Team, Mechanical Equipment Team, Mainframe/ Midrange Team, Notification Team, Personal Computer/ Local area Network Team, Public and Media Relations Team, Transport Coordination Team and Vital Records Management Team.
The duties and responsibilities for each team must be defined, and include identifying the team members and authority structure, identifying the specific team tasks, member's roles and responsibilities, creation of contact lists and identifying possible alternate members.

For the teams to function in spite of personnel loss or availability, it may be necessary to multitask teams and provide cross-team training.

Alternate facilities
If an organization's main facility or Information Technology assets, networks and applications are lost, an alternate facility should be available. There are three types of alternate facility:

1. Cold site is an alternate facility that is not furnished and equipped for operation. Proper equipment and furnishings must be installed before operations can begin, and a substantial time and effort is required to make a cold site fully operational. Cold sites are the least expensive option.
2. Warm site is an alternate facility that is electronically prepared and almost completely equipped and furnished for operation. It can be fully operational within several hours. Warm sites are more expensive than cold sites.
3. Hot site is fully equipped, furnished, and often even fully staffed. Hot sites can be activated within minutes or seconds. Hot sites are the most expensive option.
When considering the type of alternate facility, consider all factors, including threats and risks, maximum allowable downtime and cost.

For security reasons, some organizations employ hardened alternate sites. Hardened sites contain security features that minimize disruptions. Hardened sites may have alternate power supplies; back-up generation capability; high levels of physical security; and protection from electronic surveillance or intrusion.

Readiness procedures
Training
Business continuity plans can be smoothly and effectively implemented by:

- Having all employees and staff briefed on the contents of the BCP and aware of their individual responsibilities
- Having employees with direct responsibilities trained for tasks they will be required to perform, and be aware of other teams' functions

Exercises
After training, exercises should be developed and scheduled in order to achieve and maintain high levels of competence and readiness. While exercises are time and resource consuming, they are the best method for validating a plan. The following items should be incorporated when planning an exercise:

- Goal: The part of the BCP to be tested.
- Objectives: The anticipated results. Objectives should be challenging, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
- Scope: Identifies the departments or organizations involved, the geographical area, and the test conditions and presentation.
- Artificial aspects and assumptions: Defines which exercise aspects are artificial or assumed, such as background information, procedures to be followed, and equipment availability.
- Participant Instructions: Explains that the exercise provides an opportunity to test procedures before an actual disaster.
- Exercise Narrative: Gives participants the necessary background information, sets the environment and prepares participants for action. It is important to include factors such as time, location, method of discovery and sequence of events, whether events are finished or still in progress, initial damage reports and any external conditions.
- Communications for Participants: Enhanced realism can be achieved by giving participants access to emergency contact personnel who share in the exercise. Messages can also be passed to participants during an exercise to alter or create new conditions.
- Testing and Post-Exercise Evaluation: The exercise should be monitored impartially to determine whether objectives were achieved. Participants' performance, including attitude, decisiveness, command, coordination, communication, and control should be assessed. Debriefing should be short, yet comprehensive, explaining what did and did not work, emphasizing successes and opportunities for improvement. Participant feedback should also be incorporated in the exercise evaluation.
Exercise complexity level can also be enhanced by focusing the exercise on one part of the BCP instead of involving the entire organization.

Quality assurance techniques
Review of the BCP should assess the plan's accuracy, relevance and effectiveness. It should also uncover which aspects of a BCP need improvement. Continuous appraisal of the BCP is essential to maintaining its effectiveness. The appraisal can be performed by an internal review, or by an external audit.

Internal review
It is recommended that organizations review their BCP:

- On a scheduled basis (annually or bi-annually)
- when changes to the threat environment occur;
- when substantive changes to the organization take place; and
- after an exercise to incorporate findings.

External audit
When auditing the BCP, consultants nominally verify:

- Procedures used to determine critical services and processes
- Methodology, accuracy, and comprehensiveness of continuity plans

What to do when a disruption occurs
Disruptions are handled in three steps:

1. Response
2. Continuation of critical services
3. Recovery and restoration

Response
Incident response involves the deployment of teams, plans, measures and arrangements. The following tasks are accomplished during the response phase:

- Incident management
- Communications management
- Operations management

Incident management
Incident management includes the following measures:

- notifying management, employees, and other stakeholders;
- assuming control of the situation;
- identifying the range and scope of damage;
- implementing plans;
- identifying infrastructure outages; and
- coordinating support from internal and external sources.

Communications management
Communications management is essential to control rumors, maintain contact with the media, emergency services and vendors, and assure employees, the public and other affected stakeholders. Communications management requirements may necessitate building redundancies into communications systems and creating a communications plan to adequately address all requirements.

Operations management
An Emergency Operations Center (EOC) can be used to manage operations in the event of a disruption. Having a centralized EOC where information and resources can be coordinated, managed and documented helps ensure effective and efficient response.

Continuation
Ensure that all time-sensitive critical services or products are continuously delivered or not disrupted for longer than is permissible.

Recovery and restoration
The goal of recovery and restoration operations is to, recover the facility or operation and maintain critical service or product delivery. Recovery and restoration includes:

- Re-deploying personnel
- Deciding whether to repair the facility, relocate to an alternate site or build a new facility
- Acquiring the additional resources necessary for restoring business operations
- Re-establishing normal operations
- Resuming operations at pre-disruption levels

Conclusion
When critical services and products cannot be delivered, consequences can be severe. All organizations are at risk and face potential disaster if unprepared. A Business Continuity Plan is a tool that allows institutions to not only to moderate risk, but also continuously deliver products and services despite disruption.

Additional resources
Business continuity organizations
Disaster Recovery Information Exchange (DRIE)
An organization dedicated to the exchange of ideas within the business continuity and disaster recovery industry

Disaster Recovery Institute Canada (DRI)
Provides valuable services, certification and international standards for contingency planning and business continuity planning professionals.

Provincial/territorial emergency management organizations (EMOs)
Consult your local or provincial emergency management for information specific to your region.

To view this article at its source, please visit
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/em/gds/bcp-eng.aspx#a03

Innovation through Global Collaboration

2009-06-02T14:12:00.000-04:00

It is crucial to consider the strategic role of collaboration in the contemporary business environment in order for your company to stay competitive. Collaboration is becoming an incresingly important source of competitive advantage.
We came across this article published by Alan MacCormack from Harvard School of Business. The author talks about the benefits of collaboration and emphasizes the differences between "outsourcing" and collaboration efforts mistakenly confused by many companies.

Innovation through Global Collaboration:
A New Source of Competitive Advantage

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5760.html
Date: August 14th 2007
Author: Alan MacCormack
Harvard Business School

Abstract
Many recent studies highlight the need to rethink the way we manage innovation. Traditional approaches, based on the assumption that the creation and pursuit of new ideas is best accomplished by a centralized and collocated R&D team, are rapidly becoming outdated. Instead, innovations are increasingly brought to the market by networks of firms, selected for their unique capabilities, and operating in a coordinated manner. This new model demands that firms develop different skills, in particular, the ability to collaborate with partners to achieve superior innovation performance. Yet despite this need, there is little guidance on how to develop or deploy this ability.
This article describes the results of a study to understand the strategies and practices used by firms that achieve greater success in their collaborative innovation efforts. We found many firms mistakenly applied an “outsourcing” mindset to collaboration efforts which, in turn, led to three critical errors: First, they focused solely on lower costs, failing to consider the broader strategic role of collaboration. Second, they didn’t organize effectively for collaboration, believing that innovation could be managed much like production and partners treated like “suppliers.” And third, they didn’t invest in building collaborative capabilities, assuming that their existing people and processes were already equipped for the challenge. Successful firms, by contrast, developed an explicit strategy for collaboration and made organizational changes to aid performance in these efforts. Ultimately, these actions allowed them to identify and exploit new business opportunities. In sum, collaboration is becoming a new and important source of competitive advantage. We propose several frameworks to help firms develop and exploit this new ability.

Introduction
The management of innovation is changing. No longer is the creation and pursuit of new ideas the bastion of large central R&D departments within vertically integrated organizations. Instead, innovations are increasingly brought to the market by networks of firms, selected according to their comparative advantages, and operating in a coordinated manner. In this new model, organizations de-construct the innovation value chain and source pieces from partners that possess lower costs, better skills and/or access to knowledge that can provide a source of differentiation. The aim is to establish mutually beneficial relationships through which new products and services are developed. In short, firms increasingly seek superior performance in innovation through collaboration. This new model is being driven by a series of trends forcing firms to re-think traditional approaches to innovation. First, the complexity of products is increasing, in terms of the number of technologies they include. No longer is it possible for one firm to master all these skills and locate them under one roof. Second, a supply of cheap skilled labor has emerged in developing countries, creating incentives to substitute these resources for higher-cost equivalents. Third, different regions of the world have developed unique skills and capabilities, which leading firms are now exploiting for advantage. And finally, advances in development tools and technology combined with the rise of open architectures and standards have driven down the costs of coordinating distributed work.
In sum, collaboration is no longer a “nice to have.” It is a competitive necessity.
In this article, we report on a study of the strategies and practices used by firms that achieve greater success in their collaborative innovation efforts. The aim was to build on prior work that provides evidence of the value in a more “open” approach to innovation, and to explore an emerging theme in these studies; that firms must consider more than just lower cost when looking at the benefits from collaboration. Our research was designed to shed light on how firms can use collaboration to create greater business value and to reveal the practices that dictate the effectiveness of these efforts.

About the Research
We conducted semi-structured interviews with managers in firms that are making extensive use of collaboration in their innovation efforts. Our aim was to evaluate how firms achieved greater success in these efforts, as opposed to understanding why or where they chose to collaborate. Where possible, we captured data on two development projects at each firm; one in which collaboration was perceived to be highly successful and another in which performance fell below expectations. To increase reliability we interviewed multiple managers from each project; each lasting between one to four hours.
In total, we talked to over 100 managers from 20 firms, gathering data on over 40 projects. By contrasting the responses, across both projects and firms, we synthesized the strategies and practices that best explained perceived differences in performance.

Collaboration is not “Outsourcing”
Our study revealed dramatic differences in the performance of firm’s collaboration efforts, driven by contrasting approaches to their management. In particular, many firms mistakenly applied a “production outsourcing” mindset to collaboration, viewing the use of partners only as a means to achieve lower costs through “wage arbitrage” – substituting a US resource with a cheaper one of equivalent skill. These firms saw little need to change the way they organized their innovation efforts to facilitate collaboration.
By contrast, successful firms went beyond simple wage arbitrage, asking global partners to contribute knowledge and skills to projects, with a focus on improving their top-line. And they re-designed their organizations, to increase the effectiveness of these efforts. Managing collaboration the same way a firm handles the outsourcing of production is a flawed approach. Production and innovation are fundamentally different activities – while the former seeks to replicate an existing product at low cost, the other seeks to develop something entirely new and valuable. In addition, outsourcing and collaboration have very different objectives. Outsourcing involves procuring a commodity asset or resource at the cheapest price. Collaboration, by contrast, entails accessing globally dispersed knowledge, leveraging new capabilities and sharing risk with partners. It is a much more sophisticated skill. While “outsourcers” achieved lower R&D costs in our study, rarely was this a source of advantage. “We lowered costs, but so did our competitors,” said one manager. “Our process is not differentiated at all.” By contrast, “collaborators” leveraged partners to create new sources of value. As Mak Agashe, General Manager for Windows Serviceability at Microsoft remarked, “We use partners to gain access to capabilities we don't possess. They have a huge impact on our ability to innovate that goes way beyond low cost and allows us to achieve significant advantages in time to market, results that we could not realize working with just our own resources.”
Firms which managed collaboration using an “outsourcing” mindset made three critical errors, as compared to more successful organizations:
- They didn’t consider the strategic role of collaboration, but saw it only as a tactic for reducing cost. As a result, their efforts were misaligned with their business strategy.
- They didn’t organize effectively for collaboration. Instead, they treated partners like suppliers of parts or raw materials, and managed them using a procurement function.
- They didn’t make long-term investments to develop collaborative capabilities.
Instead, they assumed their existing staff and processes could handle the challenge.
In combination, these errors meant firms systematically missed opportunities to use collaboration for competitive advantage. By contrast, successful firms found that attention to these critical areas generated new options to create value that competitors could not replicate. Below, we describe the principles that these latter firms employed.

1: Develop a Global Collaboration Strategy
In many firms, little thought was given to strategy; these companies typically began using global partners to lower costs, and did not evolve from that goal even after executing a half dozen or more projects. The result was a de facto, unarticulated cost-reduction strategy, driven at a departmental or divisional level. Collaboration received little senior management attention; when it did, it was because expectations were not being met.
Leading firms, by contrast, developed an explicit strategy for collaboration, designed to support their business goals. In contrast to organizations that viewed collaboration only as a tool for reducing cost, these firms considered a variety of more strategic benefits, in particular, assessing how collaboration could improve their top line through increased product differentiation. Successful organizations achieved this in two ways: first, by leveraging a partner’s superior capabilities (i.e., know-how that the firm did not possess internally); and second, by accessing a partner’s contextual knowledge (i.e., knowledge that the partner possessed by virtue of its local position). In combination, these benefits comprise the “3C’s” of a global collaboration strategy: cost, capability, and context.

Lowering R&D Costs
Reducing R&D costs was the number one priority for firms using partners to innovate. Firms in our sample reported between 10-30% reductions in cost, as compared to their performance prior to partnering. But savings were often lower than expected, due to the added costs associated with the need for greater coordination. Firms using an outsourcing mindset sought to lower costs through “wage arbitrage,” replacing US resources with cheaper ones of equivalent skill. Leading firms however, lowered cost in a different way. Rather than swap one resource for another, they “reconfigured” their operations to optimize performance at the system level. While the decisions they made, in isolation, sometimes appeared to add cost, these firms understood the need to change the way they organized to maximize the value of collaborative efforts.
Consider SemCo, a leader in the contract manufacturing industry, which designs and develops electronic components and systems for own-equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
When SemCo built a semiconductor plant in China, it did not replicate the design of its US facilities. While substituting US staff with Chinese staff would yield lower costs, SemCo saw a bigger opportunity in revisiting how the facility would operate. So it recruited a huge engineering staff – an order of magnitude greater than the US – and devoted them to process and product improvement. The result: a facility with the highest productivity of any in their network, independent of wage levels. Substituting one worker for another merely yields a one-time saving that can be easily copied. Semco, by contrast, built the capability to lower costs systematically over time.

Leveraging Superior Capabilities
Leading firms focused greater attention on how to leverage partner capabilities. We observed two broad types of capability in action: First, the ability to rapidly bring online large amounts of capacity, allowing firms to lower time to market and increase responsiveness, while avoiding the cost of full-time staff; and second, the ability to access unique competencies, technical know-how and/or process expertise that firms did not possess internally. Successful firms sought partners with a blend of both abilities, giving them instant access to a repertoire of skills not available in-house. As one manager recalled, “It takes us nine months to find and hire a new employee. But using our partner, we staffed up in two weeks, accessing a skill that we don’t have internally.”
Microsoft used the capabilities of a partner to dramatically improve agility and quality in one business unit. This unit provides periodic updates to customers – billions of downloads every quarter. Testing for these updates includes operating system, hardware, chipset and 3rd party application testing. It spans 5 operating systems covering millions of lines of code. Microsoft’s partner helped apply “Lean” manufacturing techniques to this process, streamlining and prioritizing tests and re-designing tasks to allow staff to work in parallel. For one of the projects, the team improved time to test by 90%, lowered costs by 70% and reduced “failure” rates to near zero.

Accessing Contextual Knowledge
An increasing focus for many firms was gaining access to the knowledge and relationships that a partner possessed by virtue of its position in a local context. In our study, examples included partners who possessed a deep knowledge of local firms with specific production skills, relationships with university faculty in a new research area, and contacts with the government officials who approved market access. These benefits, being based upon the knowledge and relationships that come from a local presence, were difficult to value. As a result, many firms tended to underestimate their impact.
Consider NewCo, a firm that designs enterprise servers sold to OEMs like HP and Sun. To complement its US staff, NewCo established an Owned Development Center (ODC) in Taiwan and teamed with a partner in India. In one recent project, the firm was having difficulty in meeting the target cost due to the high price of one particular component. So NewCo asked its ODC to leverage its knowledge of different local manufacturer’s costs and capabilities to solve the problem. The organization eventually located a new supplier that could source an equivalent component at lower cost. In this case, the value of the ODC was not in providing better capability; it came from superior local knowledge.

Thinking Strategically
Viewing collaboration through this broader lens highlights how it can be used to support a firm’s strategy. It forces managers to understand the competitive implications of partner selection, by assessing their merits along multiple dimensions, instead of only one. And it helps firms understand where to use collaboration, in terms of the parts of the innovation value chain where a focus on cost versus differentiation is most appropriate.
To illustrate, consider the strategies of two firms – A and B. Initially, firm B has a dominant position, with lower cost and superior differentiation. But firm A has identified opportunities to improve its position through collaboration. It can move along the horizontal to position C, achieving lower cost, or along the vertical to position D, achieving superior differentiation. Or it can move to position E, which is superior on both dimensions. In essence, collaboration has the potential to move firm A to the “frontier” of the space joining C, D and E. Contrast this with a firm that views collaboration only as a way to lower cost; this firm sees only one position to move to. While this may be a good choice, this firm does not see that it is not the only choice.
While successful firms often used different terms to those above, all had developed similar methods to align collaboration efforts to their business strategy. Collaboration received visibility at a senior level, and was an integral part of the strategic-planning process. Increasingly, the focus was not on wage arbitrage, but on using partners to increase business value. These firms grew more sophisticated in the use of collaboration over time; by contrast, poor performers remained stubbornly focused on cost.

2: Organize for Collaboration
The second area separating leading firms from others was how they organized. Firms that viewed collaboration through an outsourcing lens adopted a “transactional” model. They focused on how to break up the innovation value chain and specify in detail the deliverables required from each part. In procuring these parts, the selection of partners was driven mainly by cost. These firms treated partners like “suppliers” and adopted organizational structures, management policies and contracts reflecting this mindset. By contrast, successful firms recognized the uncertainty in their innovation efforts and sought mechanisms to overcome it. This required a more “collaborative” model.
The need for a different model can be seen by considering the challenge of partnering along two dimensions: The degree of uncertainty over the product to be produced; and the degree of uncertainty over the process to produce it. Replicating an existing product (i.e., production) involves little uncertainty while developing a new one (i.e., innovation) is far more uncertain. Similarly, some processes are routine and easily specified whereas others are idiosyncratic and rely on trial and error learning. When firms face little uncertainty on both dimensions – the arena of production outsourcing – traditional models work well, given firms can specify what they want and how it should be made. As uncertainty increases however, a more collaborative approach is needed. Firms that adopted a more collaborative model made different choices in terms of team design, contract structure and intellectual property management. We discuss each below.
Leading firms viewed partners as an extension of their own development organizations, seeking their participation in meetings and including them in internal communications. As part of this philosophy, they required greater continuity in partner staff, in contrast to a transactional model, in which people move in and out of projects. This ensured the “tacit” knowledge of a project’s context was retained, and improved communication between teams. As one manager explained, “It takes time to appreciate the skills of each team member and understand how to work together. When people leave, we have to go through that learning curve again. So we put a premium on ensuring staff continuity.”
Successful firms focused on improving the efficiency of information transfer between teams given the need to jointly solve problems, the specifics of which cannot be predicted in advance. Having a partner liaison manager on-site, though expensive, was viewed as critical for resolving higher-level issues. For day-to-day problems however, direct contact between team members proved more effective, helping to get questions to the right place and resolved quickly. Several firms created a “buddy” system at the start of projects, linking offsite staff to onsite staff with similar responsibilities. By contrast, in projects that tried to manage communication at a single senior level, the transfer of information was often delayed, resulting in expensive rework and reduced trust.
Leading firms also made different choices in the contract terms that governed the funding of projects and payment of rewards. They aimed to align the incentives of client and partner, reducing the need to specify what was required from each in great detail. While service level agreements were common substitutes for time and material contracts, these firms went further, sharing risks with partners and rewarding them for their top-line impact. Partners often absorbed costs in return for payments tied to revenues or profits.
In some cases, they acquired stakes in the business. As one manager noted, “We ask partners for ideas, so we need to reward their ideas and not just the effort in developing them. We give them a share of the pie, but their ideas make the pie bigger.”
The final area in which firms made different organizational choices was in intellectual property (IP) management. Global partners increasingly develop their own IP – new components, technologies and processes – to improve project performance. Furthermore, collaboration often requires that partners re-use and add to a firm’s existing IP in the search for new solutions. Given these trends, traditional approaches to IP which assume that a firm must develop, own, protect and isolate its IP are increasingly outdated.
While successful firms in our study differed on the specifics of their IP policies, their actions reflected a common shift in values; towards a more open and flexible approach. These firms sought to leverage partner IP, focusing on the cost and speed advantages, which outweighed concerns about the need for control. They developed mechanisms for partners to access their own IP, in a way that facilitated collaboration but ensured the protection of competitive assets. And they shared newly developed IP when the firm and its partners could benefit from its application, as long as the uses were not competitive.

3: Build Collaborative Capabilities
The final area separating leading firms from others was their willingness to invest in developing “collaborative capabilities.” All too often, firms assumed that their existing employees, processes and infrastructure were capable of meeting the challenge of collaboration. But successful collaboration doesn’t just happen – it is a skill that must be learned. Rarely do firms get it “right first time.” Leading firms recognized this reality, and made investments to enhance their performance over time.
Successful firms targeted investments in four areas: people, process, platforms and programs. We call these the “Four Pillars” of collaborative capability. These investments were typically funded outside the budgets of individual projects, given few projects can justify the levels of infrastructure needed to perform well on their own. In essence, leading firms made a strategic decision to invest in collaborative capabilities, and sought to leverage these investments across projects and over time.

Developing People
Superior performance in collaboration requires people with different skills, given team members often lie outside the boundaries of the firm, are located in far flung countries and have vastly different cultures. The “art” of management in such projects is in finding ways to exert influence over resources not under a firm’s control. Rather than a focus on deep technical expertise, managers therefore require a much broader skill set, associated with the need to orchestrate and coordinate the work of distributed teams.
Successful firms tackled this challenge through changes to their recruitment, training, evaluation and reward systems. For example, as well as training in technical disciplines, these firms ensured that engineering staff were educated on how to partition work into parts that can be worked on by different teams and how to manage the multiple workflows that result. The emphasis was on “softer” skills, such as communication and motivation, as opposed to discipline-based content. Increasingly, firms invited partners to these sessions, to develop a shared understanding of how best to work together.
The emphasis on developing new people skills was reinforced by a firm’s evaluation and reward systems. Unfortunately, these systems were often poorly equipped for the challenge, given they focused solely on assessing the performance of internal teams. For example, while 360 degree reviews for managers were increasingly common, rarely did firms seek feedback from partners; a critical omission given partner performance is central to effective collaboration. Leading firms recognized the need to assess this aspect of performance, developed metrics to make it visible and rewarded those who excelled. They viewed collaboration as a skill to be learned and took actions to develop it in staff.

Designing Processes
Most projects we observed employed a formal product development methodology based upon a modified “stage-gate” or “waterfall” type process. These processes are increasingly popular ways to ensure greater control and consistency in the execution of projects. But these techniques, and others that share their roots, are often predicated on the assumption of single-site development. There is a need to re-think how they should operate when managing the distribution of work among a team of global partners.
Distributed development requires a variety of additional activities as compared to single-site projects, related to the division of tasks, the sharing of artifacts, the coordination of handoffs, and the integration of components. Leading firms designed processes to address these activities, taking into account the experiences and preferences of partners.
This did not mean that each partner used the same process; rather the aim was to decide how much standardization was needed. For example, in one software project we observed, one team used a rigid “stage-gate” process to develop the core technology, and another used an “agile” process for the user-interface. Weekly and monthly “builds” were used to synchronize the work of both teams. Given each team used a process in which they were skilled, as well as one which fit their goals, the project was successful.
Ultimately, successful firms used a learning-driven approach to process design given their understanding of how to collaborate was in its infancy. Small pilot projects were used to experiment with alternative techniques, the best being chosen for a wider roll-out.
For example, German electronics giant Siemens recruited several university teams around the globe to contribute to a project led by staff in its Princeton R&D center. The firm tested different approaches to managing distributed teams, gaining insight on how contextual differences (e.g., between Indian and Irish teams) affected performance. The results are helping the firm decide what information to share with teams, how frequently they should interact and what modes of communication are the most effective.

Building Platforms
Leading firms developed technology “platforms” to improve the coordination of work. These platforms comprised four main parts: First, development tools and technologies to improve the efficiency of distributed work; second, technical standards and interfaces to ensure the seamless integration of partner outputs; third, rules to govern the sharing of intellectual property among partners; and fourth, knowledge management systems to capture the firm’s experience on how distributed work is best performed. This collaboration “infrastructure” was leveraged across multiple projects over time. The goal was to promote a long-term view of the assets needed for effective collaboration.
Consider TransCo, a leading transportation firm which undertook a multi-year project involving engineering work by over 50 global partners. The firm needed a platform that ensured the output from different partners was compatible, enabled the frequent integration of components, and facilitated testing of the entire system. Developing the platform was a multi-year undertaking, involving hundreds of staff from the firm and its partners. This effort focused on minimizing the constraints on each partner. As one manager noted, “We asked ‘what is the minimum level of commonality in process, data and computing to allow us to work together?” The resulting capabilities were vital to success – for example, the firm could make global design changes (e.g., to the system’s electrical standards) and have these “ripple through” to all affected components.
While some firms like TransCo developed customized tools for collaboration, many used off-the-shelf products. In these cases, it was common to ensure that partners used the same version of the same tool, ensuring seamless data transfer. Where this was not possible, significant up-front effort was devoted to defining how integration would be handled. Failure to do this led to major problems. Consider the troubles at Airbus, in developing its flagship A380 aircraft. Airbus’ German and French partners chose to work with different versions of Dassualt Systems’ CATIA design software. But design information in the older system was not translated accurately into the new one, which held the “master” version. Without a physical mock-up, these problems remained hidden throughout the project. The result: 300 miles of wiring, 100,000 wires and 40,000 connectors that did not fit, leading to a 2-year production delay at a cost of $6bn. Yet the cause of Airbus’s problems was not in choosing different software versions; rather it lay in the lack of an effective process for dealing with the problems this created.

Managing “Programs”
Successful firms managed their collaboration efforts as a coherent “program,” in contrast to organizations which ran each project on a stand-alone basis. A program view was critical given collaboration projects rarely met expectations early on, and performance often deteriorated when the scope of efforts was increased. Leading firms did not differ from others in this respect; but they did differ in the rate at which they improved. Top performers put in place mechanisms to help improve their collaboration skills over time.
A program view was cultivated by allocating responsibility for all of a firm’s collaboration efforts to one senior manager. In large firms, this took the form of a formal VP or director-level position; in smaller organizations, a senior manager added this role to existing responsibilities. This “Chief Collaboration Officer,” while not a direct report on each project, was tasked with developing a plan for improving the performance of all collaboration efforts. The involved the creation of a firm-wide collaboration strategy, as well as organizational changes to improve the effectiveness of execution.
The most progressive firms managed the “trajectory” through which they developed skills by carefully selecting the projects that used collaboration. Early efforts were chosen to minimize complexity, with an emphasis on “learning the basics;” more ambitious projects were tackled as skills increased. The focus was on assembling a pool of knowledge to aid future efforts, through post-mortems conducted with partners. Hence top performers set up systems to codify lessons learnt from past collaborations; and often linked partners into these systems to benefit from their broader collaboration experience.

A New Source of Competitive Advantage
Firms that devoted attention to the three areas above – strategy, organization, and capability development – were more successful in their collaboration efforts. For a few firms in our study however, these efforts not only lent support to their existing business strategies, but also led to new value creation opportunities. Their investments to build capabilities, in turn, created options to pursue strategies that could not be replicated by competitors; especially those that managed collaboration like outsourcing. For these firms, collaboration had become a source of competitive advantage.
A striking example of these dynamics was in Boeing’s development of its 787“Dreamliner” aircraft. Boeing builds the most complex commercial product in the world, each project being almost literally a “bet-the-company” experience. The levels of capital investment required and the increasing breadth of technologies that must be mastered – from digital cockpit design to new lightweight materials – have forced Boeing to look at new forms of organization, the aim being to share risk with partners while exploiting the unique technical expertise that each brings to development. Boeing’s approach to the 787 was the epitome of global collaboration. The project included over 50 partners from over 130 locations working together for more than four years. From the start, the aim was to leverage advanced capabilities from this network.
For example, in technologies like composite materials, which are being used for the first time for large sections of the airplane, smaller more focused firms had developed expertise that was unique. Rather than replicate this expertise, the firm sought to tap into it, blending it with skills from other partners developing complementary technologies. Furthermore, the relationships it established were not the traditional “build-to-print” contracts of past years. Instead, partners designed the components they were to make, ensuring a seamless integration with the outputs of other partners.
In our view, Boeing’s source of competitive advantage is shifting; it is less and less related to the possession of deep individual technical skills in hundreds of diverse disciplines. While the firm still possesses such knowledge, this is no longer what differentiates it from competitors such as Airbus, who can access similar capabilities. Rather, Boeing’s unique assets and skills are increasingly tied to the way the firm orchestrates, manages and coordinates its network of hundreds of global partners. Boeing’s experience is increasingly common across the industries we observed: Collaboration is becoming a new and important source of competitive advantage.

REFERENCES
Chesbrough, H. Open Innovation, HBS Press, Boston MA. 2003.
Cooper, R. Stage Gate Systems: A New Tool for Managing New Products, Business Horizons 33, 1990.
Eppinger, S. and Chitkara, A. The New Practice of Global Product Development, SMR, Summer 2006.
Hansen, M. and Nohria, N. How to Build Collaborative Advantage, SMR, Fall 2004.
Iansiti, M. The Keystone Advantage, HBS Press, Boston, MA. 2004.
Porter, M. Competitive Strategy, Free Press, New York, NY. 1980.
Santos, D., Doz, Y. and Williamson, P. Is Your Innovation Process Global?, SMR, Summer 2004.
Teece, D. Profiting from Technological Innovation: Implications for Integration, Licensing, Collaboration
and Public Policy, Research Policy 15, 1986.
Williamson, O. The Economic Institutions of Capitalism, Free Press, New York, NY. 1985.

Swine Flu Business Contingency Planning

2009-04-30T12:30:00.000-04:00

The Swine Pandemic that is sweeping North America has businesses big and small launching their Business Contingency Plans. These include:

- Employees equipped and able to work from home
- Distribution of employees cell phone number and alternate contact numbers
- reconnecting with customers and vendors to ensure there is not a disruption to their business that might impact your business

For those businesses that survived SARS, you may have a plan already in place.

There was an interesting article on CNN today outlining how some large companies are mobilizing their business contingency plans.

Companies plan for possible swine flu pandemic

Following the outbreaks of SARS and Avian Flu earlier this decade, Sprint Nextel has taken the threat of a global flu pandemic very seriously. And in 2005, the company created a special group within its Emergency Incident Management team to plan what to do in such an emergency.

Passengers wear protective masks as they arrive Wednesday at Los Angeles International Airport.

Late last week, when the World Health Organization started alerting the international community to the threat of the swine influenza that originated in Mexico, Sprint's four years of planning came into action and Sprint has been working through its checklist of actions.

On Friday, it started posting information and updates on its internal Web site for employees. And by Monday, when the virus had started showing up in dozens of cases in the U.S., the company restricted travel to Mexico.

It also asked any employees going to El Paso, Texas, or anywhere else near the Mexican border to notify the company. But Sprint, which has only one call center in Mexico, has not closed any facilities yet.

By Wednesday, when the World Health Organization raised its pandemic alert to level 5, which is the second-highest level of alert that indicates a swine flu pandemic is imminent, Sprint started considering more drastic actions from its check list.

While it's still unclear exactly how severe or deadly the swine flu will be or even how devastating it will be the global economy, U.S. and International health officials are taking the threat very seriously. And as a result, so are many companies.

But the level of preparedness varies greatly among companies. And experts say that it's important for companies to take action now rather than wait until a full pandemic.

Research firm Gartner has been advising its clients to prepare as quickly as they can for the worst case scenario. For companies like Sprint that already have plans in place, the firm is advising clients to call their vendors to make sure that they are also prepared to do business during the outbreak and to test any remote communications contingency plans already in place. For those without a formal plan, Ken McGee, a vice president and research fellow at Gartner, suggests they get one as soon as possible.

"As the World Health Organization moves from a phase 4 alert to a phase 5 alert, which goes beyond the level achieved by both the Avian and SARS outbreaks, the likelihood of a major pandemic is almost certain, " he said. "And it's very important for companies to have a pandemic contingency plan in place. That said, this is a time not for panic, but for straight talk and preparation."

Sprint Nextel is not the only large company to have developed a flu pandemic contingency plan. Several large technology companies, including Microsoft, General Electric, IBM, and Dell already have plans in place.

At least initially many companies are focusing on keeping employees healthy by restricting travel and encouraging workers in affected areas to work from home. But as the threat level rises, so will their reactions to situation. For example, Sprint is now considering whether to sanitize call centers and offices in regions where the virus has been identified or whether it should eliminate face-to-face meetings with employees who are living in regions where the swine flu has already shown up.

"With the alert level rising, we are having a lot of conference calls to decide what to do," said Crystal Davis, a Sprint spokeswoman and a member of Sprint's Emergency Incident Management team.

Microsoft has also activated its incident management team, which responds to various types of diseases, natural disasters and other emergencies.

"We're following the guidance from the Mexican government as far as our offices and employees," said Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz. "We are strongly encouraging everyone to work from home. The Mexico City office is open, but we are asking folks only to go in if it is absolutely necessary."

Global conglomerate GE has already decided to restrict employees to essential travel only to Mexico and it has updated its existing contingency plans to deal with a potentially larger impact from the swine flu, according to a representative.

Following the bird flu and SARS diseases earlier this decade, IBM in 2006 started including pandemics as part of its disaster contingency planning. The company has done an assessment of how many employees can work at home and what skills they have in the case some employees get sick. Outside of Mexico, though, IBM has not put any measures in place in response to the swine flu.

Cisco Systems, which also has offices in Mexico City, says it has not closed its office there. So far, no Cisco employees have been affected by the swine flu, but the company has decided to implement a range of precautionary measures. For example, it has restricted nonessential travel to, from and within Mexico. And since many schools in Mexico City are closed, it's allowing employees to work from home.

While most companies say they are monitoring the situation and providing employees with information about how to minimize risk of infection and what symptoms to look for, not all of them said they were restricting travel or making other major plans to deal with the situation.

Japanese electronics giant Sony has operations in the Mexican cities of Laredo, Mexicali, and Tijuana. The company is not restricting employee travel, but is "closely monitoring the situation at all of our facilities," a Sony representative said.

PC maker Dell, based right outside Austin, is also not asking employees to change any travel plans or temporarily closing any offices right now. Company spokesman David Frink said Dell does have a pandemic flu plan in place.

And Verizon Communications, the nation's second largest phone company, said that it is "simply monitoring the information coming from global and national health organizations about cases and casualties but we continue to operate on a business as usual basis with no travel restrictions or constraints on activity of any kind. There's no need at this time to take further action," according to a company spokesman.

But Gartner's analysts say it is very important for companies to develop contingency plans in case an outbreak of swine flu forces them to close offices or take other operation-disrupting actions.

Nick Jones, another Gartner analyst, recommends in a blog he posted earlier this week that companies consider using wireless broadband in addition to cable or DSL service to enable remote working from a range of locations. He said that a remote office can be set up using wireless 3G technology.

Some adapters come with built-in Wi-Fi, which provides another potential connection mode, if the person is near a Wi-Fi hotspot. Jones also suggests that companies set up these smaller home-based networks across several geographic areas and networks in case one access network becomes overloaded. And for people outside wireless broadband coverage there's always satellite, he said.

Companies should also look for ways to use mobile devices, such as sending a copy of the disaster or contingency plan to employee phones and maybe using video phone calls as a substitute for in-person meetings, he said.

And finally, he suggests that companies have everyone's mobile number handy to contact them in the case of an emergency.

As the threat level increases, Gartner analyst Ken McGee says that companies need to move quickly.

For companies that already have contingency plans in place, he says that they need to halt all other activities and direct all their resources to activating their plans. He suggests testing home networks of critical employees to make sure they are working. He also suggests talking with vendors to see their level of preparedness.

"This is not a snow day," he said. "Companies need to review their plans and find their weaknesses and gaps readiness. And then they need to fill them immediately."

For companies that do not have a plan in place already, McGee says they need to be aware of hotspots where the virus is already infecting people, and they should be preparing to set up home networks and possibly shut down their offices in those regions.

"If they haven't prepared for this up until this point, there isn't much they can do in terms of getting support from vendors or communications providers," he said. "They're just too late for that."

As for Sprint, Davis says the company has already planned how it can offload functions to other offices and call centers throughout the country depending on where the outbreak is occurring. She also said that the company is well-prepared for many of its employees to work remotely.

"We are a mobile wireless communications company," she said. "So a lot of our employees are already mobile and working remotely."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/30/tech.companies.swine.flu/index.html

Conferencing RFP Questions

2009-04-28T10:32:00.000-04:00

We work with many Audio & Web Conferencing end users who are looking to evaluate a Conferencing Service Supplier. Below you will find a list of questions and topics that may be valuable in assessing a vendor and controlling your conferencing costs.

Just to give you an example, we have been working with a customer who's negotiated rate is $0.12 with Intercall. When we conducted an invoice analysis, (total number of minutes divided by the total pre tax amount of the invoice) her rate was $0.39 per minute. The ancillary fees tripled her costs.

Through an RFP process or an informal RFI, costs can be flushed out and therefore remove any fee surprises. As part of your investigation, it should be assumed that your conferencing vendor charges for everything unless they indicate otherwise.

Best regards,

Recite Conferencing

Conferencing RFP Questions

Service
Reservationless/On Demand
Operator Dial Out
Event Calls (Operator Answered)
Event Calls using PIN codes Access
Web Conferencing
Video Conferencing
Video Conferencing Equipment
AV Integration
Streaming/Web Casting

Web Conferencing
WebEx
Netspoke
IBM Same Time Unyte (WebPro)
IBM Same Time Unyte (Web Lite)
Microsoft Live Meeting
Adobe Connect
Citrix Go To Meeting
Citrix Go to Webinar
Contex Presenter
Unified Meeting
Avaya Meeting Exchange
Ready Conference Web Meeting

Features
Online Tools
Self Provisioning
Invoice Details on line
Recording
Downloadable recordings
CD Copy of Recording
Soft Copy of Recording
Touch tone Audio commands
Post Conferencing email call summary
Security features
International Toll free Access
North American Toll Free Access
Wallet Cards and Welcome Kits
Welcome Kits
Maximum Number of Participants
Languages offered
24/7 support
Paper Invoice
Electronic Invoice (PDF version)
Billing by Second or Minute
Transcription
Participant List

Ancillary Fees
Moderator Set Up Fee
Unused Line Fee
Participant List
Scheduling Fee
Cancellation Fees
Conferencing Fees
Unused Moderator Fee
Paper Invoice Charge
Communication Line
Wallet Card
Recording
Download of recording
Call Minimums
Leaderview or Event Call Viewer
Custom Bridge Prompts
Set Up Fees
No Show Fees
Any other fees not specified here
Archived Call Fees
Archived Call Extension Fees
Archived Call Participant Lists
Event Call Participant Details
Event Call Participant Verification
Transcription
Streamed Audio

Contracts & Agreements
Minimum Commitments
Contracts
Contract Penalties
Auto renewal
Company Information
Where is the Customer Service Call Centre Located?
Is the Universal Service Fund (USF) applicable? (9.5% to 11.75% U.S. FCC charge)
Where would my Account Manager be located?
Will my account have a dedicated Account Manager?
What Taxes will I be paying?
What type of Conference Bridges are used? (ensuring a carrier grade bridge is being used. You may also want to know if it is a VOIP bridge or regular phone lines)

Bridges located in the United States are subject to the USF fee as well as the Patriot Act laws. This may or may not be relevant to your business. The Patriot Act seems to be of concern to foreign government agencies and not relevant for most other organizations.

If you have any questions on why we raised some of these questions, please feel free to contact us.

Managing Remote and Virtual Employees

2009-03-10T21:53:00.000-04:00

Managing remote and virtual employees is a challenging role. There are personalities to take into account, communication styles people prefer to interface with as well as coaching and training.

We came across this article from the Puget Sound Business Journal written by motivational speaker and Bob Nelson. He brings up some valuable points to take into consideration when managing people remotely.

Build trust with remote and virtual employees

According to a U.S. Labor Department report, about one in 10 employees today has an alternative work arrangement. Managing employees who are not physically located near you is a particular challenge.

Perhaps your employees are located at a different facility or even in a different state (remote employees), or maybe they're telecommuting (virtual employees). Regardless of the reason for the separation, these new "distance" working relationships make it harder for managers to identify and acknowledge desired behavior and performance.

Managers must be more systematic and intentional in looking for opportunities to recognize their employees when those instances are less obvious.

If you are charged with the responsibility of managing remote teams, consider these ideas:

Build a foundation of trust. The starting point in almost any strong working relationship -- virtual or not -- is trust. Without the daily face-to-face contact between manager and employee, trust is more vulnerable to breakdown. Virtual and remote employees, in particular, must know that their managers trust them to carry out everyday work functions, be competent to do the basic job with little or no supervision, and perform to the established standards.

Make time for people. Despite the advances in virtual offices and remote locations, there's no substitute for "face time" when it comes to building trusting relationships. Managing is a people job so, naturally, you need to make time for people. If your employees are in the office infrequently, meeting with them when they are around has to be a higher priority. How time together is spent makes a difference as well. Talk about real issues of importance to employees.

Maintaining a sense of teamwork. When employees are not in the same place, organizations must still create and sustain a strong sense of camaraderie, commitment and collaboration. Managers can take a proactive role in fostering a sense of teamwork by establishing regular times for telephone calls, e-mail messages, teleconferences, videoconferences and computer chats. Electronic message boards can be used for ongoing communication about progress on critical aspects of the team's work. Communicating in these ways gives virtual employees the opportunity to exchange ideas with team members, talk about the problems they may be having, discuss ways to improve, evaluate the team's progress, share ideas, get feedback, brainstorm new ideas, and discuss strategies. Everyone needs a forum in which to share problems and acknowledge successes.

This last point is critical. For team recognition to be effective, you must acknowledge success. If you don't focus on positive results along the way, you won't get more of the same.

Bob Nelson is president of Nelson Motivation Inc. in San Diego and an author of numerous employee business books. Reach him at bnelson@bizjournals.com.

To view this article at it's source, please visit http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2003/09/15/smallb4.html

We hope you found this helpful!

Steve Maynard: Guest Speaker at Wilfred Laurier University

2009-03-02T08:41:00.000-05:00

Steve Maynard, Director of Sales has been invited to lead Alumni Career Connections sessions at his alma mater, Wifred Laurier University:

B2B: Career Connections (Student Event)

Confused about which career path is right for you?

If so, join us at Career Connections to meet and receive career advice from Laurier alumni who have chosen their path!

Laurier alumni who have found a career in a variety of industries will be available to answer all of your questions. Spend a great evening:

Acquiring professional advice
Networking with Laurier alumni
Discovering potential career paths

Event Details:

Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Time: 5:30 - 7pm
Cost: Free!
Pre-registration is required.
Location: Senate & Board Chamber

http://www.laurieralumni.ca/alumni/events?calendar_id=101

Read what Laurier has to say:

Stephen Maynard, Director of Sales and Founder
Recite Conferencing
Table 6—Sales: Telecommunications
Major: Economics
Extracurriculars: Icebreaker, Fashion ‘n Motion, Winter
Carnival, UBG
Number of Years in Industry: 6
When starting his career, Stephen aligned himself with large organizations to build his
résumé. A mentor encouraged him to move from a purchasing role to a sales position
within Nortel as he was displaying natural ability. Stephen then obtained a sales
position with a small start up company in the conferencing industry (telephone, video
and web conferring). He is now with his third start up company and has moved back in
the conferencing industry as a founder of Recite Conferencing. His role as Director of
Sales is heavily focused on training and supporting the sales team, acquiring new
customers and planning the strategic direction of the company. Stephen has also
completed multiple sales and management courses and a number of industry‐specific
technical certifications to become the company specialist in certain fields.

http://www.laurieralumni.ca/bank/pageimages/Career%20Connections%202009%20Program%20-%20For%20Web.pdf

If you are interested in participating, please register at the Laurier site.

Enjoy!

Telecommuting: Part of the Green Initiative

2009-02-18T15:46:00.000-05:00

How can Canada go green in the knowledge age?

Here is an interesting article from Paul Lima at the CBC

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/tech/hightech/telecommute.html

TelecommutingWorking from home: Is it for you?
Last Updated January 30, 2008
By Paul Lima

I am not an environmentalist. The family recycles and we have a composter, but I have an SUV. I bought it before Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth and environmental concerns became in-your-face issues. Having said that, I suspect most car owners, and even people who take public transit, burn up more fossil fuel than I do.

I work from home as a freelance writer, and have done so for almost 17 years.

Every day, I wake up, grab a mug of tea and commute from my bedroom to my home office. I haven't met most of my editors or clients. I file my work by e-mail and we communicate by e-mail unless an issue seems complex, in which case I pick up the phone. Occasionally, I attend initial client meetings, but they are rare. While I'd love to attend a meeting with my client in Belgium, I don't think that will happen any time soon.

In addition to freelance writing, I teach continuing education business writing and copywriting courses for the University of Toronto. Until last year, that involved commuting downtown one night a week. Not any more. All the courses I teach are now online. That means students and the teacher are not driving or taking transit anywhere.

All that being said, I do not have the world's most sophisticated technological set up. I have a phone and a three-year-old computer with a broadband internet connection.

If I can use this technology to successfully work from home — with editors, clients and students across Canada, in the United States and in Europe — then why can't more people in corporations, organizations and government offices do likewise? Why do they have to clog our highways every morning and afternoon to commute to work?

A number of years ago, management consultant and university professor Peter Drucker wrote, "Why would any company pay in salary and time to transport a 190-pound body, when all it needed was the body's three pound brain?" Was he just ahead of his time?

If he was, he's gaining supporters for the idea. While Daniel Pink does not think the office cubicle will disappear, he says there will come a day when far fewer people commute to central locations.

"Collecting people in giant office towers does not make sense economically and environmentally," says Pink, a business consultant and author of A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.

A few companies pay lip service to telecommuting and virtual businesses, and they maintain pockets of employees in different parts of the country, or world. But in the downtowns of major urban centres, construction crews are still building skyscrapers for white-collar workers, many of whom commute from outlying areas of cities. Even if they take public transit, they often have to drive to and from transit parking lots. Such is the idiocy of urban transportation.

Take, for example, Change is in the Air: Toronto's Commitment to an Environmentally Sustainable Future, the city of Toronto's framework to tackle climate change. It contains 27 proposed actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but pays next to no attention to reducing commuting.

In fact, it sees commuters as a revenue stream. The plan calls for annual parking or motor vehicle registration fees. And, of course, there is talk of road tolls. Instead of reducing, and where possible eliminating, the city's fleet of vehicles that run on diesel, the plan talks of converting them to biodiesel fuel. I suppose we can then wait several decades for scientists to figure out what environmental problems and cancers such fuels cause.

Sadly, in the information age, we are still thinking like an industrial economy where workers have to be in one place to turn out a product. Management is not able to let go of the notion that bodies gathered in one place equal productivity. That is no longer the case when it comes to most white-collar, knowledge-based and information processing work.

On-line collaboration applications can run on internal networks or be set up for access via the internet. They can be used to help teams or departments span distances common in today's far-flung, mobile workforce. Instead of relying on meetings, the telephone and e-mails to get things done, groups can meet in real time in a portal — an on-line web-based meeting room — and use text chat to discuss issues while sharing files or viewing presentations.

Web portals can also be used as a repository for all information pertaining to a project or department. Defined users can access the portal to discuss or review specific aspects of a project. Documents that reside in the portal can be locked while one person is updating them so that others will not end up working from old material, or members of a team can meet in the portal to collaborate on creating a new document or revising an old one.

In addition, companies can use web conferencing to conduct employee training, introduce clients to new products and offer customer support.

While e-mail and instant messaging (IM) are considered collaboration tools, online or web-based tools are an important part of this growing market. The value of the collaborative application market in Canada will reach almost $160 million this year, and grow to more than $180 million by 2010, according to a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) Canada report, Finding the collaborative opportunity in Canada.

Sounds impressive, but that is a drop in the bucket of what it could be if we took telecommuting seriously.

If the environment is a problem and if we are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we will ban all but essential travel. We can start by emptying the downtowns of the world of white-collar commuters, workers who could be just as productive, perhaps even more productive, working from home.

This may seem like bad news for downtowns; however, Pink sees downtowns that are currently healthy, like those of most major Canadian cities, becoming centres of leisure, entertainment and art as people flock to condominiums and housing in the centre of cities.

E-mail, telephone, teleconferencing, videoconferencing and online collaboration tools are available right now to make it happen.

All we need is the will.

Maximizing People Talent

2009-02-11T15:24:00.000-05:00

In any Corporate forum, People Talent falls in the top 10 topics of successful businesses. As we move into the information age, Intellectual property is key to securing and retaining customers and revenue. People become your competitive advantage.

The ability to bring in specialists from around the country or around the globe can bring credibility to your product/service.

Independent consultants are a good example of specialized individuals bringing their knowledge to companies on a project basis. Thus saving companies money by leveraging their specializations to move their business initiatives forward.

The best way to reap the benefits of your People Talent specialists is to get them in front of as many people as possible. This includes customers, prospects, leads, PR people, internal functional groups and others to increase your brand.

Web Casting vs. Web Conferencing: Tips on how to choose

2009-01-20T13:33:00.000-05:00

Web Casting vs. Web Conferencing

As your organization evaluates how it is going to communicate to employees, investors, customers and other audiences, there are a few ways to deliver your message.

With Web Casting (Also known as Streaming) and Web Conferencing, both offer an excellent forum for communicating, though there are some differences that can bring value to your specific event or meeting.

So when should you choose Web Casting and when should you choose Web Conferencing?

Web Casting

Web Casting is a Broadcast Tool. Web Casting takes compressed media and "Stream's" it over the internet and is available for review via a URL.

Here are some of the key highlights of Web Casting:
+ Audio, slides and video can be viewed easily via a URL
+ As a Broadcast medium, Participants can only interact with the Host via a chat feature or if a separate Audio path has been preestablished
+ Cost effective for over 100 participants, either simultaneouly or in total over the course of the campaign
+ Registration, Polling, Testing, and Feed Back fields can be added to gather key information
+ Web Casting offers superior reporting capabilities for pre and post event

As a communication medium, Web Casting is ideal for Press Releases, Investor Relations, Employee Addresses, Training and any large event.

Web Conferencing

Web Conferencing is truly a Collaboration tool. Web Conferencing is often used in conjunction with an audio conference for full integration between the host and the guests.

Here are some of the key features of Web Conferencing:
+Web Conferencing offers application sharing, white boarding and publishing of documents
+ Host controls can be passed so that documents and applications can be viewed, altered and shared dynamically in real time
+ Cost Effective for 1 to 100 concurrent participants
+ Polling and testing can be added as well as Video Images through the use of a Web Cam
+ Web Conferencing offers on demand presentation capabilities that can be launched anytime anywhere

Web Conferencing is ideal for customer presentations, internal company meetings, training, document reviews and for meetings under 100 participants.

Pricing can vary. Web Conferencing can be purchased as a per seat or room model or on a per minute basis. Web Casting is similar to a flat rate model.

Enjoy your day!

Conferencing & Collaboration Terminology

2008-12-29T15:02:00.000-05:00

Below you will find Conferencing and Virtual Collaboration Terminology

Audio Conferencing (Also known as Teleconferencing)

Audio Conferencing or Teleconferencing: An Audio Connection involving three or more people in different locations using a phone or speaker phone.

Lecture Mode or Listen Only Mode: Lecture mode is when all participates lines are muted. Participants are able to listen but not able to speak into the Conference Call

Lock: Locking is a touch tone command that blocks others from joining the call including the operator. Locking a call ensures complete security

Chairperson/Host/Moderator: These terms can be used interchangeably to refer to the host or leader of the conference call

Bridge: The Teleconference "Bridge" is a telephony server that allows many participants to join into a phone conversation. The "Bridge" is physical hardware made up of a rack(s), line cards, power supplies etc that facilitates the Conference Service

Web Conferencing

Web Conference: Live and interactive sharing of presentations and software applications shared over the Internet

Publish: Through Web Conferencing, the Chairperson can publish a document (Usually Word, Excel or Power Point) from their computer to share with their participants. The documents are static and can not be altered or updated.

Application Sharing: Application sharing is when documents are shared in real time from your desk top. Since the software resides on the Chairpersons desktop, any software or desktop application can be shown. Only the Chairperson can alter or update Shared Applications on their own desktop.

White Boarding: Two or more users collaborate using drawing tools and writing ideas down in a virtual "white board" format

Video Conferencing

Video Conferencing: Live and Interactive video with audio used to connect two or more locations using Video Specific Hardware or Software Programs over the Internet, Private IP Network or ISDN Lines

Web Casting

Web Casting: Audio, Audio + Slides or Video available voer the Internet that is delivered either live or available in an archived link. Streaming is a highly efficient approach to reach a large number of people in a one to many presentation. Web Casting is not a collaborative tool but rather a broadcast tool

Streaming: Streaming is the delivery method of Web Casting. The Web Cast material is compressed, sent out in a continuous stream over the Internet and is decompressed as the user receives it

Audio Web Casting: A live or Archived Audio conversation that is digitized, compressed and available to listen to on a Computer or Internet enabled PDA Device

Audio + Slides Web Cast: A Slide Presentation that is narrated by audio that is digitixzed and compressed to be viewed on a Computer or Internet ready PDA Device

Video Web Cast: Using Video Conferencing Equipment, A Web Cam or Studio Camera Equipment, a presentation or speech can be delivered via the Internet for guests to view either live or in an archived format

If you have any questions or comments in regards to these terminologies, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@reciteconferencing.com

Happy New Year!

Teleconferencing Ettiquette

2008-12-01T14:45:00.000-05:00

Teleconferencing Conferencing Etiquette

Just like etiquette at a dinner table or on a golf course, etiquette is important to ensuring that all participants are comfortable with their situation and that their attention is directed to what is important.

Teleconferencing has some business etiquette that can be applied to ensure that your guests have the best possible experience.

1) Be On Time: Chairpersons, Hosts and/or Moderators should arrive a few minutes early to greet each of the participants, and let them know when everyone is present and ready to start the call.

2) Mute: All participants should mute their line if they are not speaking. This reduces background noise and improves the audio quality of the call.

3) Introductions: Always introduce yourself when speaking for the first time
It is important to introduce yourself when first speaking as other participants may not recognize your voice.

4) No HOLD: Avoid putting your phone on HOLD. Putting your phone on hold could play music into the conference which may make it difficult for the other participants to continue the meeting in your absence! Use the MUTE as an alternative.

5) Agenda: All well run meetings have an agenda that focus the participants on the items of top priority. Create an agenda and keep to your schedule and respect the time boundaries of your participants.

6) End the Call: Clearly state when call ends. To avoid an awkward ending to a call, announce that the meeting has adjourned and thank everyone for their time. If you press # #, you can disconnect all of the callers.

Other tips:

Background noise: If you have a noisy participant (coughing, typing, finger tapping, pen clicking) you can mute all the lines using the *5 feature - mute all. Then anyone wanting to speak can press *6 to unmute their own line. If muting everyone is not an option, then gently remind participants to be mindful of creating background noise.

Late Arrivals: If you have a late arrival but want to get started, press *4 and record the call. When they do join, you can let them know that the portion of the meeting they missed can be played back after the call so you don't have to have everyone wait while you bring them up to speed.

We hope this was helpful! If you have any Teleconferencing Etiquette suggestions, please share!

From the team at Recite Conferencing

Do meeting-free Fridays work?

2008-11-08T07:46:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting article from the Globe and Mail about a pilot project creating Meeting Free Fridays. Just a high level summary: great idea in theory! Gives people time to work uninterrupted on projects on Fridays however those involved in the pilot felt that it was not such as good in practice. No Friday Meetings can slow down the speed of business. The study found people were sneaking off to meet!

When you dig deep, it is important to understand what all of those interviewed echoed - workers need time to think and work without interruptions including email, phone and meetings, even if it is as little as one hour.

KIRA VERMOND
Globe and Mail Update
November 8, 2008 at 6:00 AM EST

‘They're dull. They're too long. Someone always hijacks the conversation. Too many people are invited. And they're not always the right people.”
Ask the average cube monkey to wax poetic on his or her feelings about business meetings, and chances are you'll hear these common complaints plus one more: With so many meetings scheduled, who has time to actually sit down and work any more?
No wonder companies from mammoth IBM to smaller tech firm Ottawa-based Protus have either encouraged or flirted with the concept of Meeting-free Fridays. Still others, such as Xerox and Intel, are doing what they can to offer employees ways to find chunks of uninterrupted time, whether by trying out “quiet time” or e-mail-free hour pilot projects.
“Over all, meetings get a pretty bad rap. So if people knew they had a day without meetings, they would probably be happy,” admits Dee Kelsey, co-author of Great Meetings! Great Results.
Enlarge Image
Elaine Mah at Intel's Toronto-area offices (Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail)
But are workers up to the challenge of going meeting-free, phone-free and e-mail-free even for 60 minutes?
Finding Time
That's exactly what Intel Corp. decided to find out when it launched two pilot projects last year. One involved 300 engineers in the U.S. who were required to adhere to a “quiet time” policy. They had to turn off their e-mail, send messages to voice mail and go meeting-free for a few hours on Tuesday mornings.
“It was really an opportunity to put up the walls around them so they could really sit down and have that uninterrupted span of time for thinking and design,” says Elaine Mah, Canadian business marketing manager for Intel Canada in Toronto who has studied the results. “They could finish a thought from A to Z.”
The pilot was a success, she says. Forty-five per cent of survey respondents found that they had markedly improved productivity. And 71 per cent suggested that Intel consider extending the policy to more employees.
Meanwhile, the other project wasn't nearly as popular. For that one, employees were asked to limit their e-mail use on Fridays. Only 29 per cent claimed they experienced the same degree of increased productivity.
Still, says Ann Gomez, a productivity consultant and president of Clear Concept Inc. in Toronto., avoiding the multitasking monster is important even if that vibrating BlackBerry makes it seem like an impossible task.
“People have the best intentions. They're trying to be available and responsive to their peers, but if we're true to what our jobs are, they require us to be working quietly as well,” she says.
On the sly
But what if employees need to communicate and it happens on a Friday? Tom Johansmeyer, a former management consultant in New York, remembers a chief information officer at a company he once worked for who was concerned about the number of meetings his team was having. He instituted Meeting-free Fridays. The result? The IT team snuck away to meet on the sly.
“We would usually try to find one [meeting room] as far away as we could from the CIO's office so we wouldn't get caught,” he says.
There were other drawbacks, too.
“Nobody could get conference rooms. They were booked solid from Monday to Thursday,” Mr. Johansmeyer says. “You had to make serious plans in advance.”
Eventually the policy got scrapped after six months as more trivial meetings suddenly, suspiciously, became more pressing.
“The definition of ‘urgent' started the change. At first it would be life-or-death on Fridays. Eventually it came to mean life-and-discomfort, then life-and-headache. And finally it just became part of life again,” he says.
No formal announcement of the program's demise was made.
Better meetings
Maybe the problem isn't too many meetings, though. Maybe it's just that too many managers run bad meetings, says Phil Symchych, president of Symchych Consulting Inc., in Regina, Sask.
“They're running away from the problem instead of running to the solution,” he says.
So what makes for a good meeting? Good ones should have a purpose statement, including who is being gathered and for what reason. People should also be clear on what needs to be accomplished during that time and when they leave, have an action plan in hand stating deadlines and who is responsible for each task.
“Look at sports teams. They tend to have good meetings on the sidelines in the huddle. Why? They have a deadline and people measuring the score. Everybody is clear about their roles,” Mr. Symchych says.
What shouldn't managers do? Call a meeting for the sake of calling a meeting, says author Ms. Kelsey.
“Groups lock in meetings. It's the staff meeting every Tuesday or the managers' meeting every Thursday. Nobody stops to say, ‘Do we really need a meeting?'” she says.
Be realistic
But maybe your crew is simply all talked out. Maybe a general communication timeout would make sense. Just take it slowly, advises Ms. Gomez. Start with an hour or two, not an entire day.
“Meeting-free Fridays; I know that's a sexy concept that pulls people in, but meeting-free chunks of time are easier to implement,” she says.
Mr. Symchych agrees, saying hacking off 20 per cent of the workweek for quiet time all in one go might be too ambitious. Besides, like an exercise program, an equal number of smaller chunks of time can work, too.
“You're setting up discipline and a habit. The next thing you know you're getting lots done,” he says.
Special to The Globe and Mail
The Upside:
“We are evolving into a stronger and greater knowledge economy. So if you're thinking for a living, getting that thinking time is so precious.” – Elaine Mah, Canadian business marketing manager for Intel Canada in Toronto
The Downside:
“Immediately after this kind of an announcement, you feel that you've been liberated. You're thinking, ‘Alright! No more meetings on Fridays. I can get some work done and I can get out at a reasonable hour.' But nobody had that feeling. Instead, it was, ‘Oh man. Now we have to cram in all of that stuff into four days.'” – Tom Johansmeyer, a former management consultant in New York

Go Ahead: Lead from Afar

2008-10-21T10:19:00.000-04:00

Having a read through Profit Magazine, I came across an interesting article by Kara Aaserud who writes about Managing people remotely. Here is the exert from her work:

Go Ahead: Lead from Afar

As telework gains popularity, it begs the question: How well can Managers lead people from a distance? For "Remote Leadership, Communication Effectiveness and Leader Performance" Derrick Neufeld of the Richard Ivey School for Business in London ON surveyed 41 business leaders and 138 of their remote workers on leadership style, physical distance and communication effectiveness between leaders and followers. The surprise result: "Leaders who communicated effectively, or ineffectively, did so whether they were right in front of the person or a thousand miles away," says Neufeld. "Distance just wasn't a factor."

Telecommuting: Sam Diaz gives us his view

2008-10-07T15:12:00.000-04:00

Trying to increase productivity? Send your employees home.

Posted by Sam Diaz @ 10:42 am

Companies that give their workers the option of telecommuting are seeing greater productivity, lower costs, improved employee health and greater employee retention, according to a survey released today by the Computing Technology Industry Association.
Case in point: I’m typing this from this from my own home office setup - a desk out in a corner of the garage where there’s a printer, a phone, some speakers (for my background tunes) and even a small TV with CNN on in the background. I’m still wearing the shorts and T-shirt I threw on this morning when I started the grind of getting the kids off to school. Since then, I’ve gone through my RSS-feed reader, answered a handful of e-mails and started writing this blog entry.
The upside for the boss: I started working as soon as I poured that first cup of coffee and haven’t really stopped since. The upside for me: I didn’t have to fill my tank, scrounge up some lunch money or even iron a shirt. And when the kids get home from school, I’ll be here. There’s no sitter to pay just to watch them do their homework.
Among the findings of the survey:
67 percent of the companies polled said employees were more productive, largely because they spent less time getting to and from work.
59 percent reported seeing cost savings from reduced use of office-related materials and resources.
39 percent said they have access to a more qualified staff, expanding their options to people who are located in - and not willing to relocate from - other regions. Likewise, 37 percent said telecommuting improved employee retention.
25 percent said employee health was improved, largely by reducing stress levels associated with the commute.
Other benefits included promotion of safety through reduced highway use (18 percent) and environmental benefits (17 percent).
Today’s tech tools - things like VPNs, WiFi hotspots, faster broadband connections and online and video conferencing services - have made telecommuting easier. My favorite tool: a virtual phone number from Google’s Grand Central service allows me to give my business contacts one phone number that simultaneously rings my home phone, office phone and cell phone so I never miss a call.
There are some downsides, though. Companies said that their challenges include: securing corporate information systems (53%), limiting use of unauthorized and unsupported devices (38%), and controlling personal use of corporate mobile assets (33%). To meet the challenges, companies have had to upgrade their networks and VPN equipment and expand security, training, and implementation of new virtualization technologies and applications.
For the employees, the biggest downside of being a telecommuter is that idea that you’re never really “off.” More often than not, I’ll give the boss another hour or two of work after dinner or just before bed - which can easily turn a 40-hour week into a 50-hour week. But I don’t mind. For me, giving the company some extra work time is my way of saying thanks for the opportunity to stay off the freeway and be around to watch my kids grow up.

_______________________________________________________________

Thanks Sam! Great Stats!

Would a 4 day work week make your office more green?

2008-09-20T08:53:00.000-04:00

Kira Vermond weighs in on the 4 day work week and it's environmental impact.

Weighing the merits of the four-day week

KIRA VERMOND
Globe and Mail Update
September 20, 2008 at 6:00 AM EDT

Thursday is the new Friday. At least it is if you work for one of the growing number of employers offering workers a four-day workweek to help offset long commute times, congestion, pollution and skyrocketing energy costs.
While the majority of trendsetters come from the public sector – Alabama, Utah and Nova Scotia have either implemented programs or are thinking about it – some private companies – have jumped on board the 10-hour day, Monday-to-Thursday bandwagon.
Sure, three-day weekends are nice, but do longer workdays suit older employees or those who have to pick their kids up from daycare by 5:30 p.m. on the button? And while the energy spike's silver lining might be more flexibility on the job, exactly how green is a condensed week anyway?
They want it

At VirTex Assembly Services in Austin, Tex., which made the switch to four days on Sept. 8, 2008, it was actually employees who went to management and proposed the plan, says Brad Heath, the company's president and chief executive officer.
“The increase in gas prices was really putting the pinch on their wallets,” he says before mentioning that the company made sure it asked all employees for their opinion before shutting down the machinery each Friday. “It was only going to work if it worked for everybody. We didn't want somebody to have to leave here because we went to a four-day workweek.”
Employees who need more wiggle room to pick up or drop off young children at school or daycare get 30 minutes of flex time he says. So far that's been enough time.
VirTex employees are hardly alone in wanting a shorter week. It's often listed as the most popular option in surveys. According to a recent Monster.com survey, for instance, 34 per cent of workers favoured a condensed workweek over other gasoline-saving options. By contrast, 19 per cent of workers considered employer reimbursement for gasoline costs the most appealing alternative, and only 7 per cent of workers preferred employer-subsidized public transportation.
How about clients?
While four-day workweeks make sense for the manufacturing sector, it's much more challenging for service-based companies that have to be available for clients' questions. Even on Fridays.
It's for precisely this reason that Babcock & Wilcox Canada in Cambridge, Ont., now runs a condensed week on the manufacturing side, but requires management and other support employees to work at least every other Friday, says Terry Danielczak, the company's manager of staff relations and employment. Beyond customer service, there's another upside too.
“The Fridays that you do work, they're the most productive days because half the population is off that day. It's just amazing how much you get done,” she says. No interruptions from the plant floor either.
LSM Insurance in Markham, Ont., also offers condensed workweeks to its four staff and 25 brokers. It staggers days off so all bases are covered says Lorne Marr, president.
“If a few people are taking advantage of the four-day week, we won't have everyone take off Friday,” he says. “Some have to take the Monday.”
Friday temptation
Having a wide-open Friday is a godsend for some, but for others it offers too much temptation to duck down to the basement home office to check in with work or finish that report. Ms. Danielczak admits it happens to her.
“To be honest, there are many Fridays when you're working at least half days and working from home. You're never totally away from it,” she says.
For others, working the Friday means putting in overtime, without feeling like it's eating into the weekend. And sometimes they end up making more money too.
“Yeah, the brokers are on commission so if they're able to work more hours and be more productive, they're going to do it and bring in more money as well,” Mr. Marr says.
Not so green
No doubt about it, touting the four-day workweek has a certain green appeal, which is not a bad thing from the PR point of view. But does shutting down for one day each week make sense from an environmental standpoint?
Not necessarily, maintains John Putzier, author of Get Weird: 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work. In fact, he's pretty sick of hearing about the green benefits of compressed weeks.
“I just find it annoying because when you cut to the chase, it's not about going green. It's about working less hard and having a three-day weekend. Let's at least be honest about it,” he says.
But is a flexible week such a bad thing? Aren't commuters happy about driving one less day?
“Absolutely. Then they can drive two hours to the shore on Friday.”
And that's the issue, Mr. Putzier says. Just because employees aren't driving into work on Friday doesn't mean they're going car-free all day.
“Listen, unless they're going to be shackled to the kitchen table, they don't run the lawn mower or do anything else that day, it's a wash,” he says.

Linear to Concurrent Decision Making

2008-09-09T14:40:00.000-04:00

With the evolution of technology, the decision making process for businesses has moved from a linear decision making process to a concurrent decision making process.

If you think back to the late 90's, email was just coming mainstream. We still used a word processor to write letters to mail or fax. Many people did not have or want voicemail and receptionists and secretaries (now that is an antiquated word!) were the conduit of phone calls and most communication. We travelled to almost every meeting and almost every meeting was face to face.

10 years later, technology has changed the way we communicate as well as on how decisions are made. Linear decisions where information passed back and forth or up and down a chain of command has now been replaced with real time concurrent decision making. Decision makers and influencers can work together to achieve more by talking through their choices and coming to one or more conclusions and essentially moving the peanut forward, FASTER!

As I think back to some of the larger organizations I worked for, email can drive us back to linear decision making as we wait for others to read, digest and act on our correspondence. This can be good and bad. With Blackberries, I could often get a quick ruling back but when the answer or solution was more complicated, a conversation was the better way of coming to a conclusion.

Leveraging technology can accelerate decision making depending on the scenario: Internal vs. Customer Facing, single decision makers vs. a committee etc. All important considerations when choosing a medium to achieve a decision.