
On entering the work place, they expect a similar experience- in the way they work and the way they collaborate with colleagues and customers from across the globe. They expect advanced and intuitive solutions.Business collaboration technology must evolve to serve the evolving employees – those who work from home or on the road; and it is essential that remote team members can collaborate seamlessly with employees in the office. Just like the Apple ecosystem, it would need a whole new ecosystem. But something that is not a closed environment but more inclusive. A platform of platforms that would allow everyone to be connected seamlessly without the restrictions of device or software. Imagine a collaboration tool that lets you communicate, ideate and disseminate content seamlessly while being completely location and device agnostic! That’s the power of a digital workplace platform. The real life ability to connect distributed workforce members visually to ensure active collaboration and team cohesion.Such technology is making inroads into the boardrooms, huddle rooms of many MNCs, Fortune companies and top universities globally. They are the pioneers who are embracing visual collaboration to usher growth. More importantly, with visual collaboration, these organizations are enabling an Apple like experience for their employees, customers and suppliers by bringing their entire professional world at their fingertips using the power of cloud…quite literally!What Would Steve Jobs’ ideal workplace collaboration solution offer?Natural and easy to use UI: As humans our mind retains visual communication better than verbal ones. According to the U. S. Department of Labor, “people remember 65 percent of what they learn through a combination of oral and visual communication, only 10 percent of what they learn through purely oral communication and 35 percent of what they learn from purely visual means.” The Jobs-inspired solution would make meetings, discussions and brainstorms more visual and interactive. Something as easy to use as the smartphones of today themselves that everyone can operate out of the box.Device and Operating System Agnostic: This is where even Jobs would have had to liberalize to include the millions-strong workforce globally. The ideal workplace collaboration solution must be platform and device agnostic. It should allow anyone to connect, share and collaborate seamlessly from any location. The cloud wasn’t a common term back in 2007, but today, the solution can leverage the power of the cloud to allow for real time sharing from any place, any device, any OS and at any time.Intuitive, True Collaboration Features: Remember how the iPhone gave you your contacts, work email, music, Internet, voice, video all of it together in your palm? That comprehensiveness must be retained in the Enterprise world as well. Like the phone evolved from being a device for making calls to being the center of all communication, true collaboration would mean going many steps beyond typical video conferencing solutions to offering features such as multiple content, simultaneous sharing, Application level collaboration, Co-browsing, annotating etc to name a few.Progressive companies are realising the importance of ‘experience’ in their workplace. The key to successful workplaces will lie in implementing a digital workplace technology that connects the employees and stakeholders more efficiently. It definitely needs a disruptive solution that offers greater collaboration sans the technical restrictions.Taking a leaf from Steve Jobs’ book, the workplace can become a lot more collaborative, efficient, productive and fun. Maybe the kind of solution that he would have developed for the workplace already exists. It is just a matter of being ready for the transition.