Notes Enterprises Need To Embrace Real-Time World

Real Time communication through Instant Messaging (IM) has been in use for a considerable amount of time.

Real Time communication through Instant Messaging (IM) has been in use for a considerable amount of time.

However, enterprises are now making use of the power of IM to increase speed of information transfer, improve efficiency and maximize their communication in today's competitive market.

Customers, and business colleagues no longer expect real-time communication - they demand it.

American management association reports in 2004 in a survey that "90% of respondents spend up to 90 minutes per workday on instant messaging" With the advent of internet technology, every stakeholder, including customers, suppliers and shareholders have unprecedented access to information.

When competitors are only a Google search away and stock prices in the palm of your hand it's no surprise that the rate of day to day communication is being subjected to desire for similar acceleration.

The cost of doing business is still important but customers, the stakeholders with the most power, are looking improvements in speed of delivery, efficiency, service, and ultimately cost-savings.

Lead generation, product development, team collaboration, access to business applications and customer support can potentially be optimized through the use of Real Time communication through Instant Messaging.

IM in the enterprise: IM-AGE and Gartner report that realtime voicemails can be reduced by 15%, and emails can be reduced by up to 40%.

The Instant Messaging phenomenon started mainly through private home use of services such as MSN, AOL or Yahoo, but now communication tool has spread to the work place.

Gartner reported back in 2002 that IM services could be found in over 70% of enterprises, installed for the most part, by end-users for point-to-point communication.

Many of these connections being unsecured.

People now expect to locate a specific person or piece of information immediately.

It's pretty obvious from these sorts of statistics that businesses now need to take back the reigns by controlling and optimizing the use of IM technology within their organizations with new enterprise scalability and security.

The issue of security is critical to any enterprise.

Without corporate governance every time an employee downloads a public instant messaging client such as ICQ, MSN, AOL or Yahoo and logs in, an opportunity arises for secure sensitive data to walk out of the virtual door.

Advancements in public IM capability including instant file transfer, desktop sharing, application sharing and video recording can only make the matter worse if proliferation remains unchecked and unsecured.

Considering the severe penalties for breaches of regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA it seems crazy to turn a blind eye IM issues: Just like every enterprise tool, real-time communication must be added to the business process of an organization so that everyone understands the rules of engagement.

Simply blocking every public IM client that employees are using without an enterprise IM replacement strategy could destroy all the productivity benefits gained during legitimate use of such tools.

Considerations for IM implementation and success are:- Authority level: Who will use IM? Will to their peer group and key contacts also have access so that they can communicate? Can existing groups or users be ported into the IM structure? Can IM features be turned on and off for groups with differing authority levels? Back-office integration: How well will enterprise IM integrate with existing email, calendaring, and telecoms infrastructure? Can the project be bundled with a system upgrade, e.g Domino server upgrades or moving to IBM Lotus Notes 7 Adoption: Will key participants be involved in formulation of the IM plan in order to create advocates? How will roll out be communicated? What training will take place? Objectives: Why is IM really needed? What mission critical service or competitive advantage does it provide? What are the success criteria to decide to expand from pilot to production roll out? Sponsorship: Will introduction of IM be support from the top of the organization? Stakeholders: Is there a need for expansion of enterprise IM communication beyond internal use out to other stakeholders such as VARs or distributors? Standards: How will IM map onto existing platforms including mobile infrastructure.

Can the enterprise instant messaging system be used with existing mobile handsets e.g PDAs and smartphones? What other accessibility issues will arise for mobile users? Security: How and where will security for IM be implemented? What standards exist? Remember that IM is dependent on real-time capability and so what will slowing of the system, that inevitably comes with security, do for usability? On-costs: Can these be quantified up front e.g what is the impact on mobile data usage of a field salesperson switching from SMS, emailing or paging to Instant Messaging? What is the training, resource and admin support impact? Instant Messaging and IBM: For enterprises using Lotus Notes, IBM's Instant Messaging is beginning to prove to be a very useful corporate tool.

It offers a fully featured IM and Web conferencing client together with an IM gateway that allows separate organizations using Lotus IM to communicate with each other securely.

"75% of IBM's clients say that IM makes them more productive" - IBM Software Labs To port this same technology out to Smartphones and handheld devices enterprises should look towards companies such as UK Based CommonTime who have designed enterprise software for IBM Lotus Instant Messaging that can be used remotely on wireless PDA ad smartphones via Wifi, 3G or other wireless networks.

Enterprises understand that mobility also means within the office walls.

"We recognize that Lotus Instant Messaging Support is really important to Lotus Domino customers".

"Our Lotus Instant Messaging Support and our unparalleled Calendar and Scheduling functionality (Meetings) mobilize enterprises efficiently and securely." - Nigel Mackrill CEO, CommonTime.

"IDC reported as far back as 2003 that 18.5 million enterprise employees actively used IM and predicted the market to grow from $1.1 billion in 2001 to at least $4.6 billion this year".

"This is clearly the way forward for mobile enterprise communication." Gartner described a Real-Time Enterprise as "an enterprise that competes by using up to-date information to progressively remove delays to the management and execution of its critical business processes" Gartner Research Note 2002.

Technology must be closely aligned with business objectives.

The ability to process the latest information is key to everything from generating new business, product development, manufacturing decisions and customer support and retention programs.

IM Benefits: IM benefits are both quantitative and qualitative:- Presence: IM can indicate whether team members are office based or using mobile devices without having to incur charges by calling their mobile to find out Chat: text chat with mobile users at a fraction of the cost of SMS text messaging or cell phone voice calls, particularly if you own an 'all-you-can-eat' carrier data tariff Real time: staff can get instant real time answers, and accelerate speed of collaboration.

Customer response times and service can be improved Convergence: Intelligence presence awareness in an IM client can dial a mobile number if it senses a contact is out of the office or a landline number if not.

This takes advantage of voice and data-enabled handheld devices IM offers many benefits to those enterprises that embrace it, but this opinion comes with a cautionary note.

Enterprises must be willing to adopt it professionally and mitigate risk with appropriate security that does not significantly impair the real-time experience and benefits.

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