Using Team Workspaces for Structured WorkflowsUsing Team Workspaces for Structured Workflows

In our Cisco versus Microsoft session at Enterprise Connect 2018 last month, Phil Edholm and I articulated three important conditions for when a team workspace solution becomes compelling. There must be:

Three elements required for a team workspace: a defined topic, a defined group, and continuity between them over time

We also showed which segments of an enterprise's workforce will benefit from team workspace software along with those that won't.

We concluded this portion of our Enterprise Connect session with what may have been one of the most understated, yet important conclusions to emerge from this session: Businesses could redesign workflows and processes using team workspace concepts as the fundamental building blocks. The significant implication is that team workspace concepts such as spaces, channels, shared files, application connectors, and collaboration become a platform from which an organization can build systems and solutions that support the organization's business processes.

MIT business professor Marshall Van Alstyne has stated, "Platform beats product every time." Is it possible to use team workspace concepts to create compelling platforms for driving specific business outcomes as opposed to just a convenient virtual team meeting place? Phil and I think this is not only possible, but it is inevitable!

Building a business process based on the concepts found in team workspace software, including common spaces, shared files, messaging, meetings, video, audio, and integration with third-party apps

Introducing Structured Workspaces
Workspace collaboration tools can be very helpful for groups and teams to organize content and foster collaboration around topics and projects. However, traditional team workspaces lack the focus on specific business outcomes that team leaders and managers require for assuring that teams are getting the work done.

A structured workspace is a place where a team or group can work with an end goal in mind. "Teams" in this context is a broad term that can range from a team of two to a team of hundreds or possibly thousands.

To solidify the structured workspace concept, consider a financial services organization that sells services. This process involves external participants -- prospects and clients -- as well as employees in one or more internal teams charged with marketing and outreach, sales and onboarding, informing, and upselling. A templated workspace can represent each of these areas. This type of business process has a flow that may include four distinct structured workspaces, as follows.

Public Prospect Workspace: In this workspace, the team provides the opportunity for prospects to view collateral such as documents, videos, and prospectuses, and to interact with the sales team. Interaction modes could be multimodal, including messaging, audio, video, and file sharing. Important to note is that this is a public workspace, meaning that anyone could see the materials. This workspace would function much like a public Web page; however, it is much easier to place and remove content as such a workspace doesn't require programming.

Private Prospect Workspace: As a prospect becomes more interested in the services, the financial services firm would create a private workspace containing additional documents and files specific to that individual prospect. The difference between this workspace and a webpage is that it is unique to the prospect, and the financial services team can introduce documents and other materials in a defined sequence.

For example, the prospect might first need to fill out forms to subscribe for services, and then electronically sign them. So, the financial services team would push an investor sign up form into the workspace. Next, the prospect would need to review and sign documents for transferring or rolling over funds, and the team would push those forms to the prospect. Using multichannel interactions, team members could guide the prospect through these documents in a specific sequence to achieve the desired outcome, which is that the prospect becomes a client with funds in an account managed by the financial services company.

Note that this is a templated workspace in that each interested prospect will be guided through a similar process, with similar documents, but the interactions may occur at different times and in a different order for each prospect. Also, the financial services firm could customize each of these workspaces with supporting materials and information that not every prospect asks for, needs, or wants to see. This workspace represents a place where a repeatable, collaborative business process can occur.

Continue to next page for more workspace descriptions and examples

Continued from previous page

Public Client Workspace: Once a prospect is fully subscribed to the service, the individual's status changes to that of a client. The financial services team has a public workspace designed for sharing documents and materials of interest to all clients. This may include things like the overall financial performance of the financial institution, video messages from fund advisors, and articles of interest. Internal team members can designate some documents as "must read" or "must review," and keep a digital record of when a client opens and/or reviews such documents. This could be important for documents related to changes in terms of service, tax law updates, notices of availability of 1099 forms, etc.

Private Client Workspace: Finally, the firm can create a private workspace designed for a specific client. In this workspace, it will post documents specific to that client, such as portfolio performance, account maintenance reports, any new documents that need signing, etc. Again, multimodal communication and collaboration is available between the client and team members.

There are numerous situations where a structured, reusable workspace has applicability. Any repeatable process involving people, documents, structured workflows, and collaboration may be a candidate for a structured workspace. The important point is that team workspaces, supporting business process flows, can deliver high value even in work environments where we may not initially consider a team workspace construct as a potential solution.

An example of a structured workflow using workspace concepts to achieve a desired outcome

IBM Watson Workspace and CaféX Spaces are two examples of structured workspaces. Users can customize these workspace products for inclusion in specific business processes, creating structured and guided workflows that use team workspace principles such as persistence, messaging, shared file repositories, and multimodal communications capabilities. In addition, they can create reusable workspace templates for repeatable processes. Teams can use the workspaces to guide group collaboration to a desired outcome, and they can incorporate auditing capabilities to chronicle and archive the timing of completed milestones and decisions.

It is entirely possible that businesses may be able to rethink and reimplement their customer experience strategies, including those supported from the contact center, using team collaboration principles and supported by structured workspaces.

Most of us have been exposed to "regular" team workspace concepts; embedding team workspace capabilities into structured business process workflows is an emerging idea that has tremendous merit and upside.