There are a variety of factors which are an essential part of a smoothly running business organisation. Three factors in particular, communication, collaboration and coordination are important in achieving success within an organisation and will be the main focus throughout.
Communication can be defined as ‘the exchange of an information, thought and emotion between individuals of groups; in other words, communication plays a fundamental role in balancing individual and organization objectives.’ (Agarwal & Garg, 2012).
Collaboration can be defined as ‘two individuals or a group of people work together towards achieving a common goal by sharing their ideas and skills.’ (Boyer, 2015) Collaboration gives each team member an equal opportunity to participate and communicate their ideas. Collaborating also makes employees more responsible, which goes a long way in raising their motivation levels, especially when teams work virtually. (Boyer, 2015).
Coordination can be defined as ‘the harmonious adjustment or interaction of different people or things to achieve a goal or effect.’ (Mishra, 2009) According to Mary Parker Follett (2011) ‘if there is good coordination then the combined group achievement will be greater than the total of the individual achievement.’ One of the biggest factors that contribute to the success of any business is whether or not its employees are able to perform together a team. (Boyer, 2015).
These three factors all aid to efficient team work which plays a major role in the success of a business and achieving goals. An organization functions through its people, who in turn function through communication (Mallett-Hamer, 2005). Working in teams enables employees to be quicker and more effective in their work, as compared to people who work on projects on their own. (Boyer, 2015).
Unclear communication not only results in errors and missed deadlines, but also lies at the root of many other serious workplace issues, such as low employee morale and poor job performance (USA Today, 2005).
Previous research
In the past organisations relied solely on paper-based systems for the 3Cs. Organisations relied mainly on telephone calls, face to face meetings and paper based approaches e.g. postal mail, fax and telegrams as a form of communication. Coordination and collaboration within the work place were also carried by face to face meetings along with paper based approaches e.g. dairies, calendars and time sheets.
Paper based systems before the digital technology era were successful in the running of the business, however in the long run it was actually costing a lot more money, time and man-power than once thought (MicroPal SYSTEMS, 2016), such costs include:
• Economically due to labor cost for the upkeep of the paper based system.
• Environmentally as paper was being used and wasted in some cases.
• Prone to human error and mistakes.
• Changes to be done manually and therefore resulting in unpresentable information.
• Low level of security as the only real method of securing documents was to lock them away in filing cabinets.
• Limited to storage space available.
• Difficult to back up data as pages would have to be re-written or photocopied and again this adds to storage. Records could also be lost or not filed correctly making it difficult to find.
• Time Consuming when it comes to searching for data, especially when records have not been correctly filed. With paper based diaries it is necessary to continuously check for meetings or remember schedules for the day.
At first many organisations were reluctant to adapt to new technologies as it would require staff training, possible additional staff for the changeover and purchase of required hardware and software, which are all costs. Many also think it will be time consuming digitalising current paper based information.
However, with the rapid increase in the number of people using smart phones and tablets over the last few years, current organisations cannot afford to stay out of the digital loop. Appendix 1 shows the growing number of smart phone and tablet owners in the U.S. In 2015 92% of US adults owned a cellphone/smartphone and there was 42% rise of US adults who owned a tablet from the year 2010 to 2015.
Organisations today realise that the advantages of moving to a computerised system outweighs the disadvantages. ’Computerized systems allow for greater efficiency in performing specific tasks both more accurately and more rapidly than doing the same task using, for example, a pencil and paper or a pencil and ledger book. Computerized systems also offer storage capacity efficiency. For example, a computerized system’s hard drive taking up a relatively small amount of space can store a large collection of business or personal documents. A paper-based system, in contrast, would take up at least one, and usually more, file cabinets for storage of the same document collection.’ (Levednik, 2016) In the long term, the benefits of moving to a computerised system overall saves time, less spent labour costs and is more reliable.