Revolution in the Office?

 

From MessageLabs:

FEATURE EDITORIAL

Revolution in the Office

There is a revolution happening in the world of office productivity tools, and Microsoft isn't leading it. Microsoft Office is looking long in the tooth and could be toppled. The revolution is this: the design basis of office productivity tools has shifted.

All versions of what we traditionally called Office--the desktop suite of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access--were built with the individual user in mind. Although the software is often purchased for everyone in the firm, it is the individual end-user who is enabled to work better. They can type up their thoughts and revise them easier than using a typewriter. They can build financial models or other numerical calculations, and try out different scenarios with minimal cost. They can easily build decks of slides to use in a meeting. They can create databases to track things. But with the design basis being the individual, collaboration is a secondary thought, a bolt-on to the core. You had to use email for that: Create email. Attach document or spreadsheet. Send. User first, sharing second.

The revolutionaries are starting from the opposite direction: collaboration is core to the design concept, not a secondary bolt-on. Google Docs and Zoho Writer allow you to draft thoughts in a word processing document, and to then invite other people to view and edit the document, with no emailing around of the document. There is just one edition that everyone shares. Same for spreadsheets with EditGrid or Google Spreadsheets: rather than being a digital artifact designed for one, it is collaborative from the start. Others are invited to partake of a numerical feast without having to endure spreadsheet indigestion afterward as multiple versions have to be kept in synchronization. The database functions in CentralDesktop, Zoho DB, DabbleDB, among others, to make the database collaborative, with full multi-user capabilities from day one.

One of the big differences between the two design bases has been the offline capabilities in desktop offerings. You did not need an Internet connection to work with your documents, spreadsheets, presentations or databases. They were installed locally, and as long as you had your computer with you, you had full recourse to your work and files. The revolutionaries, given their leveraging of the Internet as a services platform and the browser as the universal client, were not able to match this. But that difference is being eroded slowly, with offline capabilities being added by the revolutionaries.

So the choice of tools for office productivity going forward has become more complex. Do you continue with what you know (Microsoft Office) and buy a set of servers and add-ons to make collaboration more natural, or do you attack a different way and embrace one of the new generation of tools that includes collaboration capabilities as an integral part of the value proposition? The latter is becoming more attractive each month.

Michael Sampson

But what if no one wants to collaborate? What if teams would rather manage their work in e-mail, regardless of the business, operational, quality and project control, technological and other issues that have proven that a collaboration platform as outlined above is the way to go?

Should an organization force its employees to use the collaboration tools available, and force that use within parameters appropriate for the management of the content being created?

Or is it perfectly OK for content (created for the company, whether for internal use, sales and sales support or for delivery to customers) to reside on PC's and laptops without backup, tracking or search-ability?

Is it alright that staff refuse to learn how to use the tools made available to them? Is it OK that tools be crippled in their delivery to fit the limited perceptions of the least capable of users? (In other words, if a product has a great range of capabilities, should it's delivered interface be limited to those capabilities of the least skilled or interested users?)

Is it alright that companies not innovate their practices because power centers refuse to change their habits? Is it OK that things that are simple and quick to implement are delayed or only partially implemented so that those folks unwilling or incapable of dealing with them are not inconvenienced, even if it makes it more difficult for others to do their jobs?

Just asking.