Next Generation Workplace

It is estimated that up to 45% of the current workforce are Knowledge Workers (KW) and that by 2012, there will be a 6 million person gap between the supply and demand for Knowledge Workers.

There will be a tremendous strain on how your Knowledge Workers will access information and there are several time sinks that IDC has identified as having a significant impact on organizations that is wasting on average $30,000 in time of Knowledge Workers time per year.

IDC - * The Hidden Costs of Information Work, IDC – April 2006

1. Reformatting into one document - 3.8 hours per week - $5,701/year
2. Search but not find - 3.5 hours per week - $5,251/year
3. Recreating content - 3.0 hours per week - $4,501/year
4. Multichannel publishing with multiple applications - 2.8 hours per week - $4,201/year
5. Moving documents from one format to another - 2.4 hours per week - $3,600/year
6. Acquiring archived records with little or no automation - 2.3 hours per week - $3,450/year
7. Version control issues - 2.2 hours per week - $3,300/year
and more …

Total: $30,000 + / worker / year

Extrapolate (400 person company) - $12,000,000 / year

Avanade Inc., a global IT consultancy joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture, has worked on a solution to this issue with our parent companies called The Next Generation Workplace.

THE NEXT GENERATION WORKPLACE (NGWP):
When it comes to communication and collaboration, the way we work and the technology that empowers us has changed dramatically. What was leading edge and made sense 7-8 years ago is now of limited value. As blogs, wikis, video calls, instant messaging, shared workspace and other social networking tools become popular inside the corporation, employees are building cost-effective communities of knowledge that enable them to share information more efficiently and simplify knowledge transfer—but managing costs and security has become a priority, requiring a more controlled and centralized infrastructure, while compliance is becoming critical for tracking mechanisms.

Business Landscape:
In increasingly service-based economies, information is the vital asset- communication and collaboration is the engine that generates value from this asset. Information technology is essential to enable enterprises to build a collaborative environment for competitive advantage and business success. Specifically, digital collaboration—the use of technologies to allow efficient and valuable connections among people and information—is critical to becoming an innovative company, to establishing high-value relationships with customers, partners, suppliers, and stakeholders; to attracting and retaining a highly skilled workforce; and to achieving high-performance operations.

In order for companies to realize the full potential of digital collaboration, IT departments will need to provide new service offerings and take a holistic and proactive view to enable companies with technology to meet their needs now and well into the future. What was once a perfect fit may no longer meet your business needs due to rapid changes in how people work together and what technology can now enable.

Are you seeing a lack of responsiveness among your employees? Issues with an increasingly virtual workplace? Compliance problems? Workers constantly reinventing the wheel? Sales force not connected to your organization knowledge base (people and assets) when they are on the road? Need to share information between customers, partners, and suppliers in a fully secure environment? If you answered ‘yes’ to some of these questions, maybe it is time to rethink your Business Productivity platform.

The Solution:
With the recent releases of a series of Microsoft products, it is now much easier to get people sharing information, connected to each other and turn the corporate, external and team information into strategic assets. A dynamic IT infrastructure is a critical foundation for businesses as it can really empower the information workers to be more productive, more knowledgeable and more connected. In order to illustrate the benefits of digital collaboration, Avanade has built a business illustration which demonstrates what could be the next generation workplace for workers who deal with co-workers, customers, suppliers and providers.

This business illustration is based on various business situations borrowed from the real life:

• Unified Communication: presence-based capability delivering seamless integrated communications for e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging (IM), telephony, voicemail and web conferencing.
• Enterprise Content Management: capability to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes
• Collaborative Workspaces: bringing real-time solutions to current day-to-day collaboration challenges
• Enterprise Search: accessing the right information/people at the right time regardless of the format (structured/non structured), the source (documents repository, LOB, emails, software package, etc) and the location (PC, intranet, internet)
• Knowledge Governance and Control: information policy management ( documents, email, voicemail, etc)- access control, auditing, retention and workflow
• User Self-Service and Dynamic Provisioning: ability for a worker to dynamically perform resource provision (applications, printer queues, e-support etc) as and when they require them
• Performance Workspace: shows the evolution of web portals into actual performance workspaces where user’s roles are taken in account. This presents the user with relevant information, processes and applications, as well as connectivity to other collaborative tools such as live meeting
• Dynamic Workplace: enabling connectivity from any device anywhere to the Enterprise Network

The Technology Used:
The Next Generation Workplace centre of excellence is NOT a futurist environment. It is based on current Microsoft product and could be implemented today. The Microsoft software and Avanade assets used are :

· Microsoft Vista and XP
· Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007
· Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services 2007
· Microsoft Exchange 2007
· Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2
· Windows Server 2003 Rights Management Services
· Microsoft Office Live Meeting
· Microsoft Groove Client 2007
· Microsoft Office Communicator 2007
· Microsoft Office 2007
· Microsoft SQLServer 2005
· Microsoft Virtual Server 2005
· Microsoft Right Management
· Microsoft RoundTable™
· Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile
· Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access
· Avanade Desktop Transformation Solution
· Avanade Enterprise Communication Solution
· Avanade Enterprise Collaboration Solution
· Avanade Migration for Lotus Notes Solution
· Avanade ACA Dynamic Systems Framework
· Avanade ACA Messaging Migration Engine
· Avanade Application Lifecycle Manager
· Avanade ACA.NET


What’s Next:
In a constantly changing workplace, communication is more than a technology—it needs to be part of a strategic long-term vision for your business and technology platform. Does your current platform offer the flexibility to provide users what they need today and will want tomorrow? Does it offer a strong foundation to build on? Avanade can assist your organization to review and assess your current platform with a business productivity assessment, discuss and draft a business productivity long-term strategy with a tactical roadmap, document a business case to quantify benefits versus cost, and then work with your organization to implement an improve rationalized digital collaboration platform.

For information on how Avanade can enable Microsoft technologies for the Next Generation Workplace, or other services that Avanade Inc. can provide your organization in Western Canada, please contact Chris Hamilton at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.