Analyzing Collaborative Communication Technologies

Organization Selection and Identification of Collaborative Opportunities

The organization that I have chosen is Clean Harbors. Clean Harbors is a leading provider of environmental, energy, and industrial services throughout North America. They serve a diverse customer base. This included a majority of the Fortune 500 companies, federal, state, provincial and local governmental agencies, plus thousands of smaller private companies and organizations. They offer premier used oil recycling and refining, parts washers and environmental services. They do that for the small quantity generator market. The oil recycling and refining comes from the subsidiary named Safety-Kleen. They provide a broad set of environmentally-responsible products and services that keep business in balance with the environment.

Clean Harbors has been trusted since about 1980 for environmental, energy and industry services. Below is a list of services Clean Harbors offers:

* Waste Disposal and Recycling

* Emergency Response

* Chemical Packing

* Field Services

* Industry Services

* Production Services

* Exploration Services

* Directional Boring

* Lodging Services

* Insite Services

My personal role in the organization is the Senior Project Manager. I do bid on different jobs and also make sure that projects are getting done on-time and also on-budget. Those are just a few of my responsibilities. Because of the position that I am in and the amount of projects that we have going on I have to travel about 60% of the time. Sometimes more and sometimes less. It just depends on how many projects and also how many leads we have going on at one time.

When doing the work that I am doing I noticed that even though I need to travel for the initial bid estimate; I don't need to travel for every little thing that happens on the project. Unless something goes wrong or they need me at the project site, I figured there had to be a better way to make things a little easier on myself and also some of the people I work with. Plus saving money is always the biggest thing. With that being said I feel like using technology is the best way to reduce travel spending and also make it easier on employees.

The collaboration opportunity that I am going to focus on is going to be the use of Skype and also using Go To Meetings. They are both online communication services that would work great when working with clients that are out of state or in a different country. Using these ways of online communication it would make it easier to have the face-to-face communication without being face-to-face. This will cut down on travel expenses significantly. All that is required is for each party to have an account and also a webcam. Both forms of communication are great and easy to use.

Technology Evaluation "Same Time, Same Place"

The collaboration technology type that I chose was video conferencing. I chose this because I believe that having this on top of everything else; text messaging, email, and regular phone calls, this is a wonderful tool to have in the business sector.

Assessment Questions

Assessing the Cultural Practice

For the technology selected, answer the questions below: Does the technology:

Allow for collaboration between individuals in the organization? Yes No Do not know

Allow for collaboration between teams in the organization? Yes No Do not know

Allow for collaboration between individuals / teams in the organization, and its partners, suppliers and customers? Yes No Do not know

Help identify experts in subject areas? Yes No Do not know

Allow for the identification of communities-of-practice in subject areas? Yes No Do not know

Allow users to set up a personal profile that can be found in searches by others? Yes No Do not know

Scoring: "Yes" = 1; "No" or "Do not know" = 0

Total score for the cultural practice dimension (add up scores): 4

Divided by 6 = 66% average

Assessing the Economic Dimension

For the technology selected, answer the questions below: Does the technology:

Help reduce the amount of time working on tasks? Yes No Do not know

Allow you to easily transfer different media types to co-workers? Yes No Do not know

Permit accurate auditing for usage and cost? Yes No Do not know

Reduce the effort of working together? Yes No Do not know

Reduce the time spent searching for information? Yes No Do not know

Make completing tasks easier? Yes No Do not know

Scoring: "Yes" = 1; "No" or "Do not know" = 0

Total score for the cultural practice dimension (add up scores):5

Divided by 6 = 83% average

Assessing the Political Dimension

For the technology selected, answer the questions below: Does the technology:

Help you reach relevant peers / experts? Yes No Do not know

Support you in reaching responsible managers? Yes No Do not know

Encourage collaboration among managers / supervisors? Yes No Do not know

Help you achieve your performance goals? Yes No Do not know

Aid you in valuing the efforts of co-workers? Yes No Do not know

Meet the expectations set forth in your job description? Yes No Do not know

Scoring: "Yes" = 1; "No" or "Do not know" = 0

Total