Introduction

Abstract

The purpose of this book is to present current experiences from industry related to the organisational implementation and use of collaboration technologies. Collaboration technology is defined here as all types of information and communication technologies that enable collaboration at various levels, from two persons co-authoring a document to interorganisational collaboration where several companies are engaged in common tasks. Examples of such technologies include video and desktop conferencing, knowledge repositories, workflow management systems, online meeting schedulers and electronic meeting support systems. The number of organisations currently adopting these technologies is increasing rapidly. Collaboration technology constitutes the enabling infrastructure for key elements in business strategy today, such as knowledge management, process improvement, virtual teamwork, global collaboration, and e-Learning. Business experts such as the Gartner Group argue that “collaborative commerce” (c-Commerce) will represent the next stage in the development of e-Business applications, expanding beyond mere transaction processing to also include dynamic collaboration among employees, business partners and customers (Bond et al., 1999).