In this week’s Collaboration for Grown Ups post, I’m diving into the second and final post of the collaboration tool considerations series. We’ve already discussed the technology considerations, so now it’s time to dial into what will ultimately drive adoption: users. Ensuring a quality user experience with the collaboration tool results in a higher adoption rate and also maximizes ROI.

Check out the full post “Top 10 considerations for collaboration tools: Part Two, users,” live on Computerworld.  Hopefully this collection has been useful to you.  Have anything else to add?  Let me know in the comments section.

Leigh

@leighjasper

For some just starting to explore collaboration and its benefits, the task of choosing a solution for an organization can be daunting. In this week’s Collaboration for Grown Ups post, I’m featuring part 1 of a 2-part series to help guide organizations through some key technology considerations to ensure a system meets expectations.

From deployment to search & analytics capabilities, I hope you enjoy the read. Next week, I’ll switch gears to finish out the Top 10 focusing on what the users need.

You can view “Top 10 considerations for collaboration tools: Part One” at its original location in the Computerworld blogs. Looking forward to your feedback – be sure to leave a comment to keep the discussion going.

Collaboration for Grown Ups is well underway and I’m kicking off 2012 with what I promised: the second part of my collaboration trend predictions for the coming year. Part one addressed trends like Big Data and social networking. For part two, I switched gears a little bit into cloud deployment and how it relates to mobile and the enterprise.

Enjoy Collaboration trends for 2012: part two! Please share on your social networks and link back if you have your own blog.

Now that 2012 is full steam ahead, I can gear up my next round of posts. Stay tuned for topics like collaboration vs. FTP and what to look for in a collaboration solution.

I hope everyone is enjoying my Computerworld blogs so far.  In this week’s Collaboration for Grown Ups post, Collaboration trends for 2012: Part one, I addressed the three hot topics that have been top-of-mind for me: Big Data, Social and Mobile.

The construction industry is no stranger to the marriage of collaboration and Big Data, especially when you consider the adoption levels of Building Information Modeling (BIM).  Additionally, social by definition is already collaboration and we will see it used for more enterprise and industry applications next year, including mobile.

Enjoy part one, I look forward to discussing more trends in early 2012.

On my Computerworld blog series, Collaboration for Grown Ups, we’ve so far tackled the basic facts of collaboration. This week’s post, “If it isn’t neutral, it’s not collaboration,” is now live, and we’re digging in further, past the facts, to a discussion that revolves around the importance of neutrality in multi-party collaboration.

As I mention in the post, I spent a formative year in politically neutral Switzerland. What Switzerland has in neutrality is also crucial to the collaboration process because it ensures fairness and protection for all parties involved in a dispute or negotiation.

When considering how collaboration platforms are used and trusted to manage project information and processes, neutrality is a must! Visit the full post on Computerworld and be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

For a long time, we’ve observed the familiar headache our clients have at the end of construction projects, caused by the handover of O&M (Operations and Maintenance) Manuals. Taking place largely outside of Aconex, the assembling, approving, printing and storing of O&M manuals is onerous, resulting in a lot of effort by the contractor and sub-contractors, often right at the end of a project. (When they’re ready to move on!)

The asset owner/client in turn ends up with manuals that are not of the standard they need, and often delivered late, with all the associated risks. Not good for anyone.

Bringing the process into the 21st century
This is exactly the sort of frustration we like dealing with: taking inefficient, often paper, FTP and email based processes involving many parties to an online, simple to use, automated process. Streamlining and automating the assembly and review process of structured information like this is something we’re good at, but a key part was missing: turning the assembled and approved manuals into an easy to use, digital (or printed) set of manuals.

Delivering in partnership
Now, we’re excited  to announce a complete solution, developed in partnership with another leader in the Asset Knowledge management space, Grazer Pty Ltd. When we saw their clever digital O&M Manuals, C-Manuals, that let you navigate the information off the as built drawings, we knew that this, combined with our ability to capture and review the information would be well received.
The Grazer solutions have been tailored for use in construction, property, mining, energy, health, defence and government – so yes, a perfect fit for Aconex. We’ve been talking to a small group of our key customers about this for the past couple of months, and the response has been really good, with some sales already under the belt.

After the launch of Aconex Mobile for iPhone a few months ago (more than 5000 downloads and counting!), we’re excited to knock over another known “pain” in the construction industry.

It’s ready to go
And it’s great to be talking about it! Take a look at the video, as Aconex GM for Australia & New Zealand, Steven Brant, and Grazer founder, John Martin, discuss the solution in detail, and how our partnership came to be. And for more detail on the solution, see more on the Aconex site.

If you’re interested in seeing how the O&M solution could work for you, contact us of course. The solution is currently available for the Australia and New Zealand markets only, but we’ve got bigger plans, so drop us a line if you’re elsewhere in the world.

And if you have your own war stories of the “hangover” that is often the “handover”, please share!

Recently we launched Aconex Mobile for iPhone (check out the video) designed to help our users manage project information away from their desk. The app lets our users take the most frequent and relevant actions, such as actioning mail and documents on the road, capture images, voice and video on-site, and work with files and mail even when they’re offline.

Since so much of the work in construction doesn’t necessarily happen in the office, but on the road and on-site, it makes sense to help people manage information away from the desk. We’ve been interested in creating mobile applications for our users for some time and believe that now a number of critical elements  are coming together to invest more effort into this.

So why now?
Better hardware and operating systems, mass adoption of smart phones and faster 3G mobile networks have come together to create the right environment for us to build on. Not only that, but the adoption rates of these technologies are predicted to continue their sharp upward trend. It’s certainly something our User Experience team saw firsthand, working with our clients and users during the development of the iPhone app.

Mobile applications – it’s just the beginning
Apart from mobile apps that let you use current Aconex functionality, we’re also working on other tools that use mobile technology to help people on-site. More advanced tools to better deal with defects, safety and commissioning are a great opportunity to replace clunky, manual processes in the field, reducing double handling and speeding up project schedules.

Feedback so far
So far, the response to the iPhone app has been very encouraging, with good reviews on the usability, plenty of downloads and a nice write up from Paul Wilkinson on Extranet Evolution. We’ll keep you posted here on our next steps, but in the meantime, what’s your take on the future of mobile in the construction and engineering space?

To download the app, go to your iTunes(TM) App Store and search “aconex”. You’ll find more screenshots and support information on Support Central, our online help centre.

2011 is going strong for Aconex. As we continue to witness the success that online collaboration has brought to existing teams, we are even more excited to share it – in particular, with the attendees at the fast-approaching FIATECH Technology Conference & Showcase, held in Phoenix this year. As part of the Productivity Improvement Tools track, Hill International’s VP of Project Management Systems, Shawn Pressley, and I will be working together to present the Breakout educational session, “Reducing Costs and Increasing ROI: Project Management in the Clouds.” FIATECH’s theme this year is around innovations that deliver value and we look forward to talking about how Aconex has delivered value to this project.

In addition to exploring the challenges affecting projects today we will be showing the quantitative results of using online project collaboration. In particular, we will focus on the benefits that Hill International saw on the New York City Hall project.

Our presentation on April 20th, in the 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. spot, will be a part of the Modeling and Simulation session (held in Akimel O’otham – 2) and chaired by Firas Hijazi, Manager of Business Systems Unit at Consolidated Contractors Company. For more information all of the sessions at FIATECH, visit here.

Feel free to stop by and visit Aconex on the FIATECH exhibit floor. We’ll be located in Booth 2 and would love to meet you and hear your thoughts on what you look for in an online project collaboration system, and how we can help you deliver more successful projects.

Late last year, Aconex proudly released the company’s new user interface for our platform —the result of a year’s work by a mix of internal and external usability experts and our 70-strong product development team. It was the most radical refresh of the platform in the 10 years we’ve been doing this and, to be honest, we approached the go-live date with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. We were confident that we had designed a faster, easier to use and better-looking system, but what if users were confused by the change? Or simply didn’t like it? Fortunately, we received overwhelmingly positive responses from clients and industry commentators. The key to this success? Customer feedback on the Aconex platform drove the new interface project from the start.

With more than 12,000 projects in 70 countries using Aconex, a solution built to improve communications, it made sense to communicate with our users on the redesign, to listen carefully to “the voice of the customer” and incorporate their detailed feedback in our user interface design decisions.

But listening to customers is important even if your product isn’t related to communications and even if you don’t have a huge user base. Users work daily with your product and know it intimately. In our case, it was users who showed us how we could provide them with the richer functionalities that make it faster and easier to navigate through menus and complete their tasks. Thanks to their input, we’ve made it easier for them to capture more information on their projects and reap even greater value from their investment.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t provide a product or service that truly meets the needs of your customers if you don’t involve actual users in its design. That can be through surveys, one-on-one meetings or user conferences, and by analyzing the deals that you didn’t win.  Before you finalize your next product refresh, make sure you listen what your customers have to say.

To read industry leading commentator Paul Wilkinson had to say about the new User Interface, click here.

To read the full announcement from Aconex, click here.

To see what it looks like for yourself:

In a follow up to my post on Google wave, a friend pointed me to a slick video that describes Google Wave in just 2 minutes (much easier to digest than the 1hr+ intro video from Google!). You can watch the video here.