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Good collaboration has always been a vital part of business. But the latest Web technologies have made sharing ideas and experiences easier and in many cases more effective than ever — on a global basis.

Creating an enterprise online collaboration strategy is important because sharing information successfully means more than just installing and using tools that might or might not be useful to everyone in the organization. A big part of developing a collaboration strategy is determining the key goals of the organization and how different types of collaboration might best need its needs.

For many companies — particularly larger enterprises — it probably makes sense to appoint a senior executive to help create the collaboration strategy and guide collaborative efforts throughout the organization on an ongoing basis.

The person in charge could also be responsible for determining whether investments in collaboration technology and services are paying off, managing some of the online content (where appropriate), providing adequate security and privacy for collaboration systems, and seeing that users receive proper training for dealing with collaboration tools. Some organizations have created the position of chief collaboration officer to oversee these technologies and efforts.

Others involved in setting the collaboration strategy should include the CIO or other senior technology executive, and key business executives who can help determine what types of collaboration are practical for different user groups. Managers from human resources, marketing, finance and other functional departments most likely would be able to provide useful input. As with any major strategic initiative, it’s important to have the support of the most senior executives in the organization, including the CEO and president.

When evaluating the collaboration tools available, organizations need to consider whether it makes sense to buy commercial collaboration tools or use some of the many free programs available on the Web. They also need to decide whether to use hosted offerings such as Web conferencing services, rather than deploying collaborative technologies, or whether to deploy a mix of technology and services.

Each of the different types of collaboration and collaboration technologies has its potential uses. For example, free-form collaboration with tools like blogs and wikis enables people to exchange ideas with their co-workers, business partners and customers in an open-ended way and free them to post information or respond to items previously posted. Product developers could use this type of collaboration to trade information on designs, features and manufacturing methods. Marketing and sales organizations could collaborate on promotional campaigns.

Another type of collaborative tool — Web conferencing systems and services — enables organizations to conduct group meetings or provide live conferences on the Web. Organizations could use these resources to make product presentations to customers or provide training to employees around the world.

One of the more recent developments is the use of another tool, intranet wikis, as a collaborative platform. They can be used by employees of an individual company to share information on product development, industry and customer trends, marketing campaigns and other topics of interest to people in the organization.

Regardless of the technology, organizations can benefit in a number of ways through effective collaboration. The key is to have a cohesive strategy in place and to execute on that plan.

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