This post is the continuity to my previous posts Instant Messaging for Business Communications Part I and Instant Messaging for Offshore Development Environment

Employees gazing relentlessly into their computer screens, seemingly just killing time chatting with friends over Google Talk, Skype, AIM, Windows Live Messenger, MSN Web Messenger or Yahoo! Messenger, is a very familiar and common to most of the corporate offices. But these days, bosses are more comfortable every time he sights an employee chatting online. What was once seen as eating away productivity and time of organization, Instant Messaging (IM) has now acquired a new dimension - a tool for enhancing employee efficiency, availability, productivity, fostering the effort to bind the team and enabling cost-effective and handy communication within and outside organization. Though the thought of dealing with large corporate clients over IM might be still not very practiced, but concluding moderate sized business deals, interacting with project team members, discussing project details, taking project approvals, project updates, fixes and seeking clarifications is already a well practiced reality as of now.

Corporates are now carefully evaluating and looking at the possibilities of using IM tools for improving communication process, thereby binding team members vertically and horizontally and improving employee relationships. It is already an established medium of improving employee efficiency and productivity. Instant Messaging used to be teen agers’ fashion but now it is a “professional must have” tool. Especially in case of IT software and services companies where projects need to be managed and delivered across multiple locations, IM tools are gaining popularity as a formal communication medium.

Corporate acceptance

Many software companies use a host of IM tools, most prominent ones being Yahoo and MSN Messengers, for most of its formal and informal communications, ranging from discussions and query of employees and clients to fixing up the menu and venues for meetings, conference calls, and other social and corporate gatherings. The communication can be within the company or with its clients, vendors, dealers, business associates, resellers, etc. I have seen some of large corporates using IBM’s IM tool - “Lotus Sametime“. Microsoft’s Net Meeting is also equally popular and organizations and that is embedded in Corporate Intranet. Some of the companies are using Instant Messenger based on Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 server for exchanging short messages within organization. I have seen some prospects using Google Talk API and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 for corporate messaging. It will take some time to replace e-mail as the primary channel for both formal and informal communication, these evidences proves that the IM culture is being accepted widely in corporate environments as well.

Corporate attraction to IM

Organizations having its global presence and distributed supply chain are now trying to leverage IM to keep distant teams together. In addition to this, with projects getting more complex and demanding, IM tools are being taken as much-needed collaboration tool which simplify the communication process. IM is useful for members of the same project team who may not be physically in the same location. They find it very easy to communicate and discuss all their business problems and solutions over it.

If you talk about its advantages, it is almost a real-time communication, which is simple and user-friendly. It is also instantaneous, easy to use and cheap, and also helps in multi-tasking and collaboration as multiple people can chat at the same time with one another.

IM as strong team bonding tool

Corporates are trying to take the benefit of Instant Messaging features to enhance employee work and enhance online social networking for better collaboration efforts. This includes sending congratulatory notes, marriage wishes, voting for performance achievements, wishing marriage anniversaries, sharing experiences, sharing photo and blog posts. Regular and consistent communication through IM with help to learn about the team members at very individual level, and that helps to take proper strategy to create much responsible and loyal team members. IM increases closeness and employees are more open to express their opinions. Even the shy person opens up easily if you talk through IM.

In many corporations, managements are now trying to efficiently use the IM to develop better employee relationships. However, it still cannot replace the traditional team-building and motivational tools for better employee relationship and overall work culture improvement.

Collaboration through IM

Even more sigficant use of IM tools is its use in collaborative network among project teams and corporations have started integrating it with their business process itself to improve productivity and reduce communication costs. This trend is likely to catch up more in the future. With improved security and message archival features, IM may qualify to be a sustainable platform for collaboration and business transactions. It is a good platform for online consultation. The interactive nature of IM helps in reducing the cycle time, especially in system troubleshooting scenarios. Apart from that, IM is becoming a part of other processes such as Corporate Knowledge Management (KM) where it is used for instant knowledge sharing, archival and collaboration.
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