User Adoption = Success

To follow up with my last post, we at Actify believe that success can only begin with user adoption. These users (the information worker) are the point where any and all success begins. These targeted users comprise the extended enterprise (potentially thousands of employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, and partners) and are a diverse group of skill sets with varying technical expertise from novice to technical engineers. The information worker needs the ability to efficiently leverage their expertise, whether legal, purchasing, sales, marketing, engineering, manufacturing or other, without restricted access due to application complexity. His/her success hinges on powerful technology being simple: from installation through ease-of-use; requiring minimal training; and adhering to industry standard support.

Consider the following data from the article, “The Knowledge Worker Investment Paradox,” Gartner Research:

• Employees get 50%-75% of their relevant information directly from other employees
• More than 80% of enterprise’s digitized information resides in individual hard drives and in personal files
• Individuals hold the key to the “Knowledge Economy” and most of it is lost when they leave the enterprise

Clearly, as we move forward in the 21st century, all organizations must make product data available to more people throughout their extended enterprises–but the method must be practical. The business must provide their information workers with visual product collaboration. At the same time, they must be sure the integrity and safety of their intellectual property (IP) remains intact. This requires a great deal of trust. The trust factor must permeate the corporate culture; the corporate culture must breed trust. And finally, businesses must provide the information workers throughout their extended enterprise the tools they need to harness collective knowledge, experience, and data.

Empowering the Global Extended Enterprise

Visual collaboration across the global, extended enterprise (customers, suppliers, and partners) has become a business requirement in the manufacturing industry. When you empower the entire global extended enterprise with visual product collaboration, the benefits that businesses reap include: flexibility and agility, lower costs, the ability to do more with less, around the clock engineering, increased value to customers and suppliers, plus gain a competitive advantage.