What Is an Enterprise Collaboration System?
This blog was cowritten with Claire Cavanaugh.
What is enterprise collaboration?
Enterprise collaboration solutions and technologies are used to improve how teams work together and share information. Organizations embrace these solutions because they offer a direct route to better workforce efficiency and productivity. These solutions can include messaging, knowledge transfer, or data sharing and visibility. These tools remove silos that traditionally keep different teams and roles from working together; they also strengthen feedback loops between engineering, manufacturing, and service.
What is an Enterprise Collaboration System?
For the modern manufacturing enterprise, as in many fields, collaboration is essential. Enabled by a vast and growing array of tools, fluid and transparent communication is a fairly straightforward proposition within a specific discipline - engineering, for example. Members of the engineering team, working as they typically do within a common tool or system of tools, can note, track, and react to engineering changes seamlessly.
The challenge arises when collaboration is required beyond the engineering team and across the enterprise, where stakeholders use different tools and data types, and may not have access to the principal systems engineering relies on to keep information current and everyone in the loop. Individuals with functions as diverse as sales, manufacturing, quality, and even marketing—not to mention the extended supply chain and even regulators—need access to change information that's just as up-to-date and accurate. An Enterprise Collaboration System (ECS) addresses the communications barriers that result from this siloing of people, tools and systems.
The evolution of enterprise collaboration
Digital transformation hasn’t only changed the means of collaboration, but also the technology capabilities required for manufacturing and engineering to collaborate effectively across the product lifecycle. These include:
Need for flexibility
From engineering and production to inspection, manufacturers need flexible solutions that enable them to collaborate anytime, anywhere—whether in the same facility or across multiple business locations.
Focus on content
Work instructions and training experiences are most effective for enterprise collaboration when they're enhanced with in-context visual guidance, real-time equipment alerts, and detailed content captured from an expert’s point of view.
Easily accessible
Traditional solutions for enterprise collaboration include speaking with experts over the phone, leveraging paper-based materials for training and on-the-job guidance, and interpreting insights from siloed data. These methods aren’t only outdated, but they also lack accessibility. When considering solutions to improve enterprise collaboration, leading manufacturers look for capabilities such as remote collaboration, 3D work instructions, and comprehensive dashboards powered by data connectivity that frontline workers and stakeholders can access from their mobile device or tablet.
What are the benefits of Enterprise Collaboration Systems?
A well-implemented system for the improvement of overall enterprise collaboration delivers a myriad of specific, targeted benefits that in aggregate amplify productivity and profitability.
Improves communication
The fulcrum of any enterprise collaboration initiative is seamless, real-time, and cross-functional communication across the full product lifecycle. Modern manufacturers, especially those of complex, variable products, employ many disciplines in their development and production processes. Furthermore, physical and intellectual inputs to the final product often span an extended supply chain, encompassing multiple regions and languages.
Enterprise collaboration systems help an organization overcome the communication siloes that develop as a result of this process complexity. When every constituent has access to accurate, current instructions and product data that's up-to-date and available in the language or format he or she requires, end-to-end product management processes become more coherent. The risks and expenses of rework are mitigated, and innovation can flourish unimpaired by inaccurate or outdated data.
Streamlines work
Enhanced through an enterprise collaboration system, communication also speeds up workflows, potentially reducing time-to-market. Over the course of a product's lifecycle, the organization benefits from an increase in the quality of decision-making, and the confidence with which those decisions are made. Self-service access to product data puts needed information in the hands of the worker when, where, and in the format in which its needed. This eliminates information friction, streamlining work by fully "democratizing" product data within the community managing the product lifecycle.
Access to in-context work instructions created by experts ensures frontline workers always have the up-to-date information they need when they need it, eliminating inefficiencies commonly associated with paper-based instructions. Giving everyone across the enterprise access to live product data also improves visibility, breaking down silos between engineering and manufacturing teams and frontline workers.
Protects and enhances quality
Another benefit of enterprise collaboration systems is its role in protecting and enhancing product quality. The role of quality within the enterprise has evolved rapidly in recent decades and is now a relevant concern across the whole value chain—particularly considering increasingly burdensome regulatory regimes. For complex products, a thousand changes are not uncommon within the design phase alone, and once in the development process, changes can occur daily.
Because access to product data is immediate with a collaboration system, and the data being accessed is trustworthy, any quality issue can be flagged and transmitted to a quality engineer for immediate action and expedited resolution. Collaboration systems improve the reliability of in-line or end-of-line inspections—when it’s crucial that frontline workers identify quality issues before they leave the factory. The fewer quality issues to begin with, and the faster and more effective their resolution when identified, the better for the enterprise's bottom line and its valuable brand reputation.
Fosters innovation
Better collaboration creates more opportunities to improve in other areas. When everyone in the manufacturing organization has access to the tools, resources, and information they need to collaborate, they can shift focus to innovation and continuous improvement. And by accelerating production, improved collaboration ensures that manufacturers are first to market with innovation.
The types of enterprise collaboration systems
Although a fully realized enterprise collaboration system accommodates stakeholders in the context of their roles within the company and beyond—including partners, regulators and others—it can be functionally useful to recognize internal and external elements discretely. This allows for accommodation of intellectual property and IT security concerns, among others.
Internal enterprise collaboration
Internal enterprise collaboration, as the label implies, harmonizes product development, manufacturing and service functions within the enterprise itself. Decisions made about company-wide standards and business systems can be leveraged to optimize productivity as much as possible within those specific systems. Internal enterprise collaboration also helps manufacturers optimize their productivity within specific systems and across the workforce. Further, measures to protect a company's trade secrets and other IP can be maximized when the enterprise controls the mechanisms of collaboration entirely.
External enterprise collaboration
As already emphasized, however, the full product lifecycle involves inputs from many entities that are formally external to the enterprise. These include materials vendors, component suppliers and other partners who contribute physically to the product's bill of materials. Beyond these direct contributors, other external stakeholders like regulatory bodies and customers themselves may require contextually appropriate access to data, work instructions, and SOPs specific to their roles and authorities. The right enterprise collaboration can involve internal and external stakeholders within a governance model that includes appropriate access and necessary restrictions for every party to the process.
What are the features of an Enterprise Collaboration System?
Having described the need for, benefits of, and problems solved by an Enterprise Collaboration System at the business level, several specific features merit discussion.
Product development
Modern product development, as we've discussed here at length, requires inputs and access across a wide range of internal and external inputs. An enterprise collaboration system delivers a core communication infrastructure with zero- or low-friction connections between all parties. The result is a more efficient product development process, and one that subsidizes innovation by eliminating the costs and risks of intra- and inter-team collaboration, from concept to final product.
Workflow automation
Research shows that on average engineers often wait two to three days for updated designs from partners inside or external to the company. At the core of an enterprise collaboration system is the automation of workflows, both within teams and across the entire lifecycle. The benefits of automation are myriad, and include the elimination of simple human error, reduction of the risks to quality that that implies, up-to-the minute currency of product data, and, of course, overall speed.
File sharing
Building on and enhancing its workflow automation functions are the modern and agile file sharing capabilities defined by an enterprise collaboration system. Powered from central or well-integrated data repositories, these capabilities get the right product data, in the right form, to team members, OEMs, customers, and manufacturing partners when and where they need it. The global visibility to design and change information enabled by these file sharing capabilities helps ensure products that are built to spec, delivered on time, and within budget. Enterprise-wide visibility is the foundation and goal of collaboration. Any solutions manufacturers adopt should be scalable across the organization, streamlining collaboration for all involved teams with clear KPIs for each group.
Work instructions
Detailed digital work instructions are created with expert knowledge and easily shared across the workforce. Work instructions are enhanced and made more accurate with access to existing computer-aided design (CAD) data and parts information from PLM systems. This ensures everyone is always using the same up-to-date information, making it easier to collaborate.
Remote assistance
Remote assistance allows frontline workers to collaborate with experts in real time on a shared view. Using visuals and annotations (rather than a traditional phone call) to collaborate is particularly helpful for complicated, multi-step tasks. Remote assistance also provides valuable benefits to customers, enabling them to instantly access experts and avoid downtime.
Live IoT data
Live Internet of Things (IoT) data accessed through a single dashboard provides invaluable equipment insights that team members across the organization can use to collaborate with each other. By combining data from multiple production sources, frontline workers have seamless bi-directional interaction with all data required to perform daily work. This enables manufacturing operations teams to increase labor productivity and flexibility while reducing the cost of quality and non-conformance.
Challenges that prevent enterprise collaboration
Disconnected segments
Siloed teams might struggle to collaborate, promote critical feedback loops, and communicate design changes without shared access to tools, resources, and information. Manufacturing leaders should consider their disconnected segments as a use case for technology that connects the workforce.
Siloed data
Similarly, data silos indicate that not everyone is working with the same information. This impacts visibility and communication, making collaboration challenging or even impossible—and legacy systems can exacerbate those problems. This can also cause mistrust in the data that is available, which can result in ad-hoc and undocumented decisions made on the shop floor, which, over time, can create complexity and degrade quality and efficiency.
Outdated tools
Outdated instructions and disparate systems don’t just make collaboration difficult. These can actually hinder collaboration by giving the workforce out-of-date information and forcing them to waste time looking for the correct information.
No companywide collaboration strategy
When considering a companywide collaboration strategy, including all relevant teams for input and alignment is critical. Strategies created in silos will fail to unlock enterprise collaboration.
Lack of tracking and monitoring
Without tools in place to track and monitor equipment performance, manufacturers risk their frontline workers relying on out-of-date or siloed information, which impedes collaboration.
How to implement an Enterprise Collaboration System?
Implementation of a winning enterprise collaboration system, as with any complex technology undertaking, starts with the right strategy. A careful, cross-enterprise cataloging and prioritizing of current pain points—siloes, sub-optimal workarounds, and systemic delays will allow the organization to develop clear and mutually agreed goals for the implementation.
Choosing a system is next; it's critical that it not only be powerful and comprehensive enough to address the issues identified in the previous step, but accessible and easy to use for all intended stakeholders.
With goals set and a system selected, the implementation plan must include keeping the workforce and all other involved parties fully informed not only about what's already happened, but what to expect and when. Training must be thorough and should be aligned with the needs and abilities of each role expected to interact with the system. Trust in the system will be fundamental to its effective adoption.
Finally, launching an enterprise collaboration system is an ongoing process, not a point in time. As implementation proceeds, its impact on the target problems or opportunities identified in the strategy-setting phase must be tracked and measured, not only to optimize the system functionality as it matures, but to assess its business return on the money, time, resources, and effort invested. A careful investment in the right collaboration system, deployed through a strategy-based, well-paced implementation, can realize benefits which add up to better productivity, more robust financial results, and stronger competitive advantage.
Empowering the connected workforce to enhance enterprise collaboration
Enhancing enterprise collaboration is in itself an act of collaboration—it requires alignment and commitment from all teams involved. Download our eBook to discover how leading manufacturers are adopting a combination of technologies that connect the workforce and improve collaboration across the enterprise and the value these solutions are delivering.