A look at how groupware allows small-company employees to work simultaneously, saving both time and money.
Today's groupware lets people in small companies do everything from work simultaneously on the same document to carry on 'face-to-face' electronic meetings and record conversations over time
What attorney Bill Wright was facing was a failure to communicate. First, one of his three partners suddenly up and left, taking 17 employees of the Bellmawr, N.J., law firm and lots of clients with him. Then, within days of his departure, the prodigal lawyer sued his former partners. Of course Wright's firm turned around and filed a countersuit. What with impromptu hallway discussions, emergency meetings, news flashes, urgent requests for background, and the rest of their caseload, the remaining staff at Farr, Burke, Gambacorta & Wright barely had time to breathe. "We had to find a way to help us handle the flood of information," says Wright. "And we had to find it fast." Simple E-mail, he knew, would not suffice. He needed something that would organize and catalog information, not just zap bulletins around the office.
What Wright and his colleagues did was to turn to groupware, a category of software used, as the name suggests, to help people work in groups. Instead of holding one meeting after another, they bought and installed a program called TeamTalk (from Trax Softworks) on their network and started using it to discuss business. When Wright had to produce a draft of a proposed settlement, for example, he no longer had to rummage through notes from previous discussions and interrupt his partners with time-consuming questions. Instead he simply looked in the program's database for a record of earlier memos and messages relating to the topic.
A year after the suits were settled, groupware had become the interactive glue holding Wright's firm together.
* * *
Not long ago, small firms like Wright's (which earns about $2 million in revenues each year) could not have availed themselves of groupware -- not unless they wanted to go bankrupt in the process. Seven years ago, when Lotus Development introduced Lotus Notes, the groupware pioneer, the software cost an eye-popping $62,500 for 200 users. It was difficult to set up and use, requiring the kind of expertise and training rarely found in smaller companies. Now not only are top-of-the-line products, including the newest version of Lotus Notes, much cheaper, but many more choices are available. (In April, Microsoft came out with a direct competitor to Notes, a platform called Microsoft Exchange Server.) The smaller guys can now take advantage of groupware's ability to help people scattered across a building -- or a continent -- create blueprints, reports, memos, and diagrams as if they were sitting at the same conference table.
That's not all groupware can do. Today groupware enables you to access a database of everything from doodles to discussions, run electronic meetings, track work flow, and carry on and record conversations over an extended period of time. And that's only the beginning.
But don't take out your checkbook before you know the whole story. With the more sophisticated products, you can't just pop in a program and expect to get it up and running. Indeed while the actual software can cost anywhere from $100 to $1,000 (it's often priced according to the number of people using it), the real expense for fancier fare lies in installation, training, and maintenance. For every $1 of Lotus Notes, small businesses pay $3 to $5 in consulting services, according to David Coleman, managing director of the Collaborative Strategies Division of GroupWorX, a small management-consulting firm in San Francisco that concentrates on groupware and knowledge-management tools and strategies. Still, especially with lower-end programs, small companies can get their groupware going without too much trouble.
* * *
Many Strokes for Many Folks
The term groupware refers to anywhere from 5 to 12 different program types. Some programs include many features; others are more limited. Packages like Lotus Notes can incorporate the services of outside consultants who can customize an application for your business, install it, and train the troops to use it. Others are simple enough to set up and use on your own. Finally, while most groupware requires a local area network (LAN), including a server and attached client computers, alternative software is available that uses the World Wide Web. Two examples are RoundTable (from ForeFront Group) and WebBoard (from O'Reilly & Associates). Experts expect an explosion of this groupware over the next year as software producers rush to convert their products to the Internet.
For small businesses, a few of the most useful groupware-application categories are as follows:
Knowledge sharing. The bermensch of PC databases, knowledge-sharing groupware lets you store information in just about any form -- diagram, free-form text, memo. Searching through a "knowledge base," as it's called, is also easier than searching through a garden-variety database because it involves fewer steps. Everything is in one place and accessible.
Group calendaring and scheduling. This kind of groupware allows you to check schedules and set up meetings with other people.
Real-time meetings. Participants can be linked together in a network over which they answer questions, make comments, and vote -- all anonymously if they choose. This category of groupware allows users to read and respond to information on their screens and to participate in brainstorming sessions without being put on the spot. Or with videoconferencing software and a video camera attached to their computers, managers and their distributors in, say, Kuala Lumpur, can hold a "face-to-face" meeting.
Bulletin boards. This type of groupware lets you carry on "conversations" over long periods of what's known as "nonreal time." All comments are stored and organized in easy-to-retrieve form. So, for example, if in August you want to see what staffers said about your product launch last January, you just call up their comments.
Group document handling. You and your colleagues can work simultaneously on the same document on your screens. Most of us don't work that way, however, so it may be the least-used type of groupware. That could change as groupware catches on.
