It’s all about Groove and SharePoint Workspace

Microsoft France just published a new wesite dedicated to technologies usages. Of course, you will discover some use cases dedicated to Groove. More details there (in french): http://www.groovons.org/2009/01/19/le-centre-des-usages-microsoft/

Few weeks ago, I wrote several postings related to the usages of Groove in Education and Research sector.
A new case study is now available: EM Lyon Business School

” At Ecole de Management de Lyon (EM Lyon Business School), students learn about real-world uses of information technology in business. Just as today’s business workplace has become increasingly decentralized, with employees using technology to stay connected while working remotely, EM Lyon students need to remain in contact with peers and complete group projects while working at off-campus internships and other assignments. Students found this difficult using traditional desktop software, so the school explored options for building a robust collaborative platform that would facilitate communication while also teaching students about real-world information sharing strategies. By carefully analyzing student needs and taking advantage of the power and flexibility of Microsoft® Office Groove® 2007, EM Lyon created a virtual office solution that met its requirements and was easy to use.”

Read the whole case study: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000003197

Alistair Speirs, an Office Technology Specialist at Microsoft Australia published few days ago an article called “The Case for Groove“. In this article, he explains why Groove perfectly fits IT requirements and is a perfect solution to enable collaboration in “organisationally, geographically and chronologically dispersed teams“. 
A “must -read”!

As a sumary, Alistair also mention sectors/activities in which Groove is deployed and /or effective in the Asia Pacific : “Emergency services agencies, utilities companies, mining and resources companies, schools, small businesses, mobile sales teams… etc”.   We have quite the same analysis and results here in EMEA.

And I really enjoy his last sentence : “The great thing about Groove is that it solves problems that we never thought we’d be able to solve. That sort of magic is applicable in almost any organisation.”

I really invite you to read his article!

Microsoft published few days ago a document describing how Groove can be used to improve post-merger integration process. The author highlight issues usually encountered….

Here are 2 interesting quotes :

“   The post-merger integration planning team must work with the deal team to understand the projected synergies, and then create a road map to achieve them. This task is challenging because employees from the merging companies may be located in multiple geographic regions and work on separate networks. Integration team members cannot share documents and information through their network and often must depend on e-mail to work collaboratively.
Collaborating via e-mail and sending highly valuable, business-critical documents raises serious security concerns, including the potential loss of intellectual property. Recent research in high-tech manufacturing has shown that close to 80 percent of workers have used nonsecure public communications tools to collaborate with partners, and only 27 percent of business users and 37 percent of technical decision makers surveyed consider their collaboration tools to be “definitely” secure.  “

 and

” The acquiring company often has a standard plan for post-merger communication, but in almost all cases, effective internal communication requires collaboration between management, human resources, and other departments of both companies.
With so many internal decisions to be made and a significant amount of time spent communicating with employees, some companies going through post-merger integration lose focus on their external communication to customers, clients, vendors, the community, and the media. As with internal communication, it is critical for the management of the two companies to work together to effectively communicate to its external stakeholders and customers.  “

And, of course, this document also describe benefits provided by Groove to improve team collaborative in this context.

Spend few minutes to read this document…
It’s very interesting!

Sorry, this entry is only available in french.