The way forward for collaboration and learn how to navigate the following part of labor

The future of cooperation looks very different than in the past, not least thanks to COVID-19. Today more than ever, companies are forced to rethink the networking and collaboration of their distributed teams and to adapt accordingly.

At a recent Amazon Web Service event, executives from Paramount Pictures, Calloway Golf – Media Productions Division, and Telemanagement Resources International shared how the work in their organizations has changed and how it is changing Future of cooperation.

How the collaboration has changed

The collaboration industry is expected to be a $ 13.7 billion industry by 2024 – more than 176% more applications were installed last year.

Collaboration is a broad term made up of several different sectors. The fastest growing segments in this industry include:

1. Teamwork apps
2. Video as a service
3. Communication platform as a service
4. Unified Communications (UC) as a service

“Every organization has to define what collaboration means for your organization”. – DR. S Ann Earon

Cut off the fat

Collaboration requirements will vary across organizations and teams. While many companies are looking to expand their toolset for collaboration solutions, Paramount Pictures’ Scott McPhail described his experience with the opposite – reducing the number of tools actually used. “What was the need? What had to be communicated? What tools did we use? And it became even more important to identify the tools that made it possible for us to work together fully … ”.

Replacing the physical space

On the creative side, Calloway Golf’s Jeff Neubarth needed to target the content they created with a more immediate audience on social media. Without the typical “newsroom” environment that he and his team were used to, they had to find new ways to brainstorm and be creative when they weren’t physically in the same room.

Challenges in cooperation that have to be mastered

Collaboration anytime, anywhere

Regardless of company size, industry or age, companies usually face similar challenges when working together. Businesses want connectivity they can have anytime, anywhere with any application. As a result, there has been a significant shift towards cloud-based communications, enabling remote worker productivity and virtual work platforms that are secure, scalable, and collaborative in real time.

“Bluescape is the only platform I’ve found that allows visual self-organization with functions such as video conferencing, an API for easy integration and [is] supporting a variety of content types “- Dr. S. Ann Earon

Moving work off-site

Creative people like Jeff Neubarth found themselves in a completely new landscape. Given the current COVID-19 restrictions and protocols in place, Jeff had to reconfigure how he planned, set up and communicated with his team while on location. Using Bluescape in real time to provide updates, checklists, and even stream videos, allowed the team to work as usual and receive approvals seamlessly.

“It really changed the way we work. … [I]In this post COVID world … we will still be using a lot of what we did in this COVID world … [,] We’ll use it to develop the way we work because I think it makes us better. ”- Jeff Neubarth

What to think about when introducing a collaboration solution

Whether small, medium or large companies, collaboration solutions require technical and non-technical considerations before they are rolled out on a large scale.

The ups and downs of daily work

On the non-technical side, Dr. Eamon adopts an approach that puts people first, putting the life of the individual first before technology. Collaboration solutions must take into account that today’s employees have the ability to work remotely without stigma. You don’t have to take into account the routine ups and downs of day-to-day work and at the same time excite and inspire people to actually use them. You need to keep the spirit of being alive in a physical space while connecting people in different areas and time zones.

This is a big job – it requires re-understanding what processes each team is focusing on, finding common problems and solutions across organizations, and reassessing how current tool sets are being used.

“Bluescape is because of its ability to interact with [it], and … the API functionality and brings systems into this platform on which everyone is still familiar with some of their tools. It enables a more seamless transition to this larger, global company. ”- Scott McPhail, Paramount Pictures executive director of international creative services and operations

Adaptation of legacy systems

On the technical side, collaboration solutions must be easy, secure and scalable to integrate into legacy company systems. They need to be accessed by large numbers of people around the world, which is why the transition to cloud-based technologies has been enormous. Jeff Neubarth described how his everyday life involves extremely large video files that have multiple rounds of iteration and are shared across the company.

“Bluescape did an amazing job of helping us connect to servers, download exactly what we needed, and be able to return exactly what we needed in ways I’ve never seen before.”

Looking ahead…

The past year has shown how important it is to have a resilient framework for cooperation in companies. End-user examples from Ford, Vocon and UPenn, among others, underscore the importance of modernizing processes and integrating digital technologies, especially as more and more companies are switching to hybrid workforce models.

Digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) are the future of collaboration. While these technologies may be adopted by companies more quickly, Dr. Earon predicts that this will be the future in both SMBs and corporate enterprises. These technologies are particularly useful when used to automate processes that currently seem routine and inevitable. As Scott McPhail sums up, “The companies and processes that are changing the way we work will be the ones that will evolve and make people think outside the box.”

Watch the full Bluescape x AWS panel interview “The Future of Collaboration” here: https://lavnch.com/lavnch-days/aws-lavnch-event/the-future-of-collaboration/