Working Smarter Can Help Turn the Economy Around
By Bob Picciano, General Manager, IBM Lotus Software

We are in a very challenging period of history – a time that is testing us all. Yet the challenges we face also provide an opportunity we shouldn’t waste – a chance to transform the way we work to be more productive, efficient and resilient. By taking a “smarter” approach to our day-to-day activities, we can positively affect the economy in profound ways. By “smarter,” I mean a world where digital intelligence can boost productivity by being embedded not just in individual things, but also across entire systems, impacting everything from traffic flows to electric power to the way our food is grown.

But in order to get from where we are today to where we want to be tomorrow will require some dramatic changes to standard operating procedures. From my perspective, I see nine key factors contributing to this smart transformation this year – nine for ’09 if you will:
1 - Universal access to collaboration technology on any device will redefine what it means to be "at work" in an increasingly mobile and globally distributed workforce. Improved applications for mobile devices will offer enterprise office levels of security, flexibility and ease-of-use.

2 - Messaging will move beyond basic email and calendaring to become an integrated platform for communication, collaboration and sharing of resources.

3 - Organizations will begin managing their workforces primarily through the use of human networks. Employee skills and interests will be easily catalogued, helping employers find the perfect fit for projects and assignments.

4 - Unified communications will enable interaction through any mode via any computing device. Rich presence will drive interactions; instant messaging will be the defacto form of communication; traditional telephony will give way to "voice collaboration."

5 - Despite challenging economic conditions in 2009, the affordability and ease of using cloud-based software services will transform many small-medium businesses and individual corporate departments into global trading partners.

6 - Free and inexpensive technology will spread, allowing cash-strapped organizations to weather the storm of economic uncertainty with everything from office desktop productivity to social networking and collaboration in the cloud.

7 - The availability of essential business applications, the growing popularity of Netbooks, budget pressures and general maturity of the platform will push Linux on the desktop towards critical mass.

8 - Business applications will increasingly become interactive on mobile devices.

9 - Mashup technology will become increasingly used by IT and line of business workers to create a millions of morphing situational applications to solve daily problems.

As these technology factors and scenarios increasingly take hold within business environments around the world, we’ll experience a dramatic shift away from the outdated and inefficient practices of the past. The old reliance on resource-draining business trips, over-crowded inboxes, paper-based operations and hierarchical methods of finding information and answers will ultimately be cast aside in favor of the smart-work movement.

Down the road, imagine what you could do from your desk, your home, your neighborhood coffee shop with the new communications tools at our disposal. You could form your own network of experts to manage any business situation. You could bid for a project; find talent to complete a project; meet with your customers; or create plans with your partners and colleagues for new products or services from any location, at any time of the day or night. What if it didn't matter where people were located or the organization of which they were a part? What if you could move your work to the Internet-based cloud to be shared?

The results would be astounding. Costs would go down.

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