HOT NEWS IN THIS REPORT:

1. Web-based Collaboration Tools
2. Cool Tool: ReturnPath
3. Cool Tool: Marketleap Visibility Index

Executive Technology Briefing (ETB)
Editor/Publisher: Jordan Ayan
Contributing Editor: Chuck Frey

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WEB-BASED COLLABORATION TOOLS

Online collaboration is rapidly emerging as a powerful tool that companies of all sizes can use to supercharge their project teams and bring products to market faster, while also reducing their costs.

Online collaboration, which encompasses everything from online discussion forums to sophisticated shared workspaces, has only recently become practical and affordable, thanks to growing business use of high-speed, dedicated Internet access and significant improvements in the collaboration tools themselves.

The goal of online collaboration tools is simple: Make it possible for people who are not in the same location to share ideas, jointly edit or append documents and work together across time and space. Some of these tools are synchronous - that is, they require all team members to be online at the same time. Others are asynchronous - that is, team members don't have to use the tool simultaneously. Instead, they can log in to the project or shared workspace when it's convenient for them. As team members contribute documents, reports or discussion items, they are immediately accessible to everyone else on the team. Because all team members have access to a common, up-to-date base of knowledge about the project, online collaboration tools tend to help reduce miscommunications and wasted effort.

Business applications of online collaboration tools include:
-- Managing product development projects, including shared repositories of engineering drawings and other project-related files
-- Brainstorming and problem solving,
-- Holding online meetings with suppliers and other business partners, and
-- Conducting interactive training sessions.

Application: Product development

One of the areas where online collaboration will soon have a huge impact is product development. As products have grown in complexity, development teams today often consist of team members in multiple locations. At the same time, engineering departments are being pressured to bring new product designs to market faster, without sacrificing quality.

Product development processes share several common traits: they tend to involve numerous people who contribute to the project in a variety of roles, and they usually generate a large quantity of messages, documents and reports that team members need to effectively do their jobs. Now that the major suppliers of CAD programs are adding online document sharing features to their software, they can be used with collaborative online workspaces to revolutionize product data management.

Meeting the needs of knowledge work

According to the Gartner Group, today's knowledge work does not have a defined work process. Tasks are not usually determined in advance, but are dynamically determined by team members in response to issues, opportunities and challenges as they arise. Several new online collaboration tools are designed to accommodate the level of flexibility that today's ad hoc business processes demand.

Collaborative workspace applications like Copernus WebSpace (http://www.copernus.com) make it possible for team members to easily upload and share documents and drawings, conduct online discussions, share a common calendar and other advanced workgroup functions. WebSpace doesn't force team members to fit their project data into a rigid template. Instead, the team can build a flexible collection or outline of shared resources, organized to best fit the needs of that project and team members' requirements. Copernus WebSpace can be installed on corporate networks or operated as a hosted ASP application. Typical costs for customized implementations are $100,000 to $150,000.

Peer-to-peer collaboration: Groove

If you want to see the future of online collaboration, check out an innovative new tool called Groove (http://www.groove.net). Groove was designed to support ad hoc, on-the-fly collaboration and brainstorming, growing needs in today's ever-faster business environment. Groove leverages the power of peer-to-peer networking -- in other words, it uses the Internet to connect computers to each other, rather than through a central server. Groove's collaborative toolset includes document sharing, a calendar, contact manager, text chat, live voice chat, photo viewing, a drawing pad, outliner and a Web browser with "follow me" Web browsing (I take control of your browser and demonstrate a site's services to you). This innovative toolset is the brainchild of Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes - the most widely used, network-based collaboration tool favored by large companies.

When you install Groove, it creates a space on your computer that can be securely accessed by other Groove users that you invite to collaborate with you. An identical copy of this workspace appears on each team member's screen. When two team members are online at the same time, they can work together on shared applications and documents. Groove automatically synchronizes each person's workspace, so that any changes one person makes to an item or document are transmitted live over the Internet to the other members' PCs.

If any team members are not online, these workspace and document modifications are stored on a relay server. When these users plug back into the Groove network, their workspaces are updated and synchronized with the rest of the team. This means that Groove can be used offline; the software maintains a complete, self-contained copy of any workspaces on the user's PC, and automatically synchronizes with other team users when the computer is reconnected to the Internet. All transmissions between team members' PCs are encrypted, and only people you have invited to collaborate with you can share the workspace on your PC.

A free preview edition of Groove is available for download from the company's Web site. Groove's official launch is expected in the second quarter of 2001. At that time, Groove Networks plans to introduce an enterprise (paid) version that will offer improved functionality and scalability. This is an awesome application that I predict will revolutionize online collaboration.

Project tools create instant knowledge bases

One of the issues that many companies are now struggling with is how to create shared "knowledge bases" - collections of the knowledge and wisdom of past projects that other employees can learn from. Most attempts to gather this project-specific knowledge succeed in gathering only the "what" of the project, but fail to capture the elusive "whys" and "hows" - the essence of the team's decision-making processes that provide the highest knowledge value to future teams and projects.

One of the most valuable benefits of centralizing all project communications in collaborative workspace is that these new online tools become a complete record of a project. As team members contribute ideas, decisions, reports, documents and other critical information, the tool maintains a complete archive of all of the "whats," "whys" and "hows" of the project - which can be archived as part of the company's knowledge base. Typical post-project analyses usually only capture the "whats" - a general overview of the steps of the project. But these collaboration tools also capture the key decisions that team members made, the issues and trade-offs they considered, and how they selected their course of action. This added context is critical to future project teams that seek to learn from the wisdom of their predecessors.

Online meetings and training

One of the most popular and easy-to-use collaboration tools available today is WebEx (http://www.webex.com). This well-designed toolset includes presentation sharing, document sharing, "follow me" Web browsing, audience polling, live chat and other applications, all delivered via a Web browser (version 4.5 or later of Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator). WebEx has become very popular for online PowerPoint training and sales presentations, demonstrations of e-commerce services and for wide-area training sessions.

I particularly like how well integrated and easy to learn these tools are, even for a first-time WebEx user. In addition, WebEx works well on low-speed, dial-up Internet connections, a big plus if some of your team members don't have broadband Internet access. WebEx also makes it easy to send e-mail invitations to meeting attendees, and tests each user's browser for compatibility before attempting to start up a WebEx session. You can arrange a free WebEx meeting with limited functionality; the standard rate for the full set of collaborative tools is $0.35 per person per minute.

Online brainstorming

As many of you know, I have written two books on creativity. I believe it is the critical input to success with technology. I am always looking for new tools that can help with the creative process. Several online collaboration tools enable geographically dispersed teams to brainstorm and problem solve. GroupSystems Online (http://www.groupsystems.com) is a Web-based application that includes tools for creating a meeting agenda, generating ideas, categorizing and voting on them, plus group outlining and survey tools. When team members are contributing ideas, their identities can remain anonymous, which promotes a free exchange of ideas. Pricing is not publicly available.

MindManager 4.0 from MindJet LLC (http://www.mindmanager.com) is a versatile mind-mapping tool that I have used and loved since version 1.0. The latest version improves the capability that allows users to share visual maps with others in an online conference session via the Internet. Team members can take turns editing a map and can also exchange ideas via a text-based chat window.

Bottom-line benefits

As I've pointed out in past issues of ETB, speed is a potent strategic advantage in today's Digital Economy. These team collaboration tools can help small, geographically dispersed work teams handle common business processes faster, with less miscommunication than phone, fax or even e-mail methods of communication -- ultimately translating into a shorter time to market for new products, services and strategic initiatives.

Just as compelling, are the bottom-line benefits of using Web-based collaboration tools. Because they enable teams to meet virtually rather than in person, they can help companies slash project-related travel costs and employee downtime by 50 percent or more.

I urge you to explore and try out some of these online collaboration tools, to determine which ones are a good fit for your organization. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.

COOL TOOL: RETURNPATH

http://www.returnpath.net

One of the problems facing online marketers is "e-mail churn" - the number of e-mail addresses in a marketer's database that go dead because customers have changed their e-mail addresses, but failed to notify the company. According to one company, as many as 25% of e-mail addresses go dead every year due to job changes, ISP switches and migration to new connection technologies like DSL.

ReturnPath is a new firm that offers a suite of services to help Web marketers overcome the problem of "e-mail churn" as well as to provide a time-saving convenience to consumers. This company offers a suite of "e-mail hygiene" services to businesses, including analyzing e-mail lists to determine which addresses are no longer working and which ones have been replaced by new addresses, and an automated system for correcting format and syntaxes of e-mail addresses (2 @@ symbols in an e-mail address, for example). These services are priced on a per address corrected basis, and are similar to offline services that direct marketers use to clean up their postal mailing lists before sending out printed marketing materials.

Over time, ReturnPath hopes to create one of the largest collections of consumer e-mail addresses anywhere, which will enable it to offer an "electronic change of address" (ECOA) service to e-marketers and consumers. The company has already caught the attention of online marketing giants Donnelley and DoubleClick, who collectively manage e-mail marketing campaigns for hundreds of bricks-and-mortar and dot-com companies and are integrating its e-mail clean-up and ECOA services into its offerings.

ReturnPath aims to help consumers centrally manage all of their e-mail subscriptions by making it easy to alert any Web sites, newsletters and friends a user designates of a change of e-mail address. This service is free to consumers, but most of these services won't be fully operational until the 2nd quarter of 2001, when ReturnPath estimates that its client base will encompass enough e-marketers to make them useful.

This new suite of e-marketing services is best suited to any organization that sends e-mail newsletters or marketing messages to its customers or constituents. ReturnPath says its e-mail cleanup services offer huge potential savings for its clients - because more accurate e-mail lists mean more potential sales. This "opportunity cost" runs from $1-2 per e-mail address for online newsletters to $30 per address for online retailers, according to the company.

COOL TOOL: MARKETLEAP VISIBILITY INDEX

http://www.marketleap.com

Many of the major search engines now use the popularity of a Web site -- as measured by the number of links from other sites that point to it -- to rank it in search results. Marketleap, a search engine optimization and Web marketing firm, recently launched a new tool that lets you measure how many sites are linked to yours on 10 major search engines. You can also use this new Web-based service to measure how your site's popularity compares to your competitors and other major online players.

Simply enter your Web site's URL and up to three other Web site addresses, and the Marketleap Web site quickly generates a detailed link popularity report, which you can view in your Web browser and have e-mailed to you. This valuable new service is free.

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That's all for now! I welcome your comments and feedback on the Executive Technology Briefing, which will help me to focus it even more closely on your needs.

Jordan Ayan
President
Create-It! Inc.