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Connecting @ IBM
"IBM is well ahead of other companies with bringing collaboration, knowledge and learning together."
- Karen Ughetta
Director, Collaboration and
Knowledge Imperatives
In a big company like IBM, it is essential that employees stay connected, regardless of where they work; whether in Russia or in the UK, in the office, at home or at a customer site. A recent survey has shown that more than 46% of our employees work at a non IBM location. So how do all these people stay connected?
From laptops to cell phones to Internet access, IBM makes a significant investment in work tools for employees, but also leverages technologies that support a flexible, mobile work environment.
Below are a few examples of the tools and technologies that connect IBM'ers:
W3
IBM’s corporate intranet, also referred to as W3, is a world-class example of an on demand workplace and the central nervous system of the company. W3 is designed to deliver information and tools to employees based on the specific, individual roles they play in the corporation.
While w3 provides ongoing insight into company issues and activities, it has evolved into far more than a communications medium. It is a fully integrated platform that has become the locus for work and the movement of ideas, and the place where our workforce goes to access knowledge, expertise, information and tools -- on demand.
Some of those “top notch” applications include BluePages (the employee directory and expertise location system), Jams (online collaboration events), and tools for travel, expense accounts and procurement.
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Same Time Messaging
Instant messaging allows IBM’ers to send and receive text messages in real-time to and from anyone else on the company network. Instant messaging has become so prevalent within IBM that it is one of the key components in worldwide employee-to-employee communications.
Our instant messaging infrastructure currently supports over 4 million instant messages daily, with more than 300,000 unique users every week. During peak hours, more than 200,000 users are logged-on simultaneously
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Teamrooms
TeamRooms are Lotus Notes database for IBM teams. These powerful collaboration tools are more than a data repository. Users have the ability to have threaded discussions, manage projects, post and track action items, and keep a team calendar. Because IBM TeamRooms are asynchronous, teams can work anytime, anyplace.
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An e-meeting is any meeting involving participants who are not all physically in the same place. It allows to communicate with colleagues and customers in a more efficient way, providing both voice and visual channels. Such services significantly decrease decision cycle time and reduce travel expense and disruption. Some examples of IBM e-meetings are:
- Web conferences, which provide shared visuals, and are used along with an audio conference ("teleconference")
- Webcasts, which are live events intended for a mass audience, and are viewed either at the workstation using a media player or via the IBM TV network
- Audio conferences, ("teleconferences" or "conference calls") the most familiar type of e-meeting
- Video conferences, which is the capability of seeing other participants while including presentation material
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Wiki
Wiki is third party collaborative server software that allows users to create and edit Web content using any browser. The Wiki page is easily created, modified and updated by anyone with access.
A Wiki's strength is collaboration. If a team puts a Wiki together, anyone can change information as updates occur, and team members always have the latest and greatest information.
A Wiki is unique in that it keeps a record of every change, usually on the “Recent Changes” or “History” page. These pages record the date changes were made, and who made them -- a great tool for keeping up with who has edited a Wiki.
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Blogging
BlogCentral is a place to publish information and ideas onto IBM's Intranet. It is a personal portal and a place for organic knowledge capture as IBM accelerates into an On Demand work environment. Beyond giving every IBMer a way to get important information onto the Intranet, blogging allows others to comment on ideas, sparking debates and the creating of informal communities around specific topics.
Blogging is also another way to identify others in IBM working on similar projects in separate parts of the company. Before spending months solving that big problem, wouldn't it be nice to find the other group inside of IBM who solved the same problem a few months back or came up with an amazing work-around?
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Jamming
Though online jamming started only four years ago it's already integral to IBM's culture. In fact, giving a voice to everyday IBMers has done a tremendous amount to shape that culture.
Begun as an experiment to demonstrate the power of IBM's intranet and to bring employees together to brainstorm serious business issues, w3 jams have proved their effectiveness in spades. To date, jam events — ranging from the groundbreaking WorldJam in May 2001, to the culture-shifting ValuesJam of 2003, to the unprecedented WorldJam 2004 — have surfaced hundreds of thousands of ideas and helped forge thousands of new relationships
On many levels InnovationJamming broke new ground. More than 140,000 people — IBMers, their families, clients and Business Partners from 104 different nationalities — came together for this revolutionary 76-hour online session. Discussions cut across borders, age groups, languages, politics, culture, economics and expertise.
In one corner of the Jam, a digital media expert from IBM and an employee from Disney discussed the disposal of nuclear waste, while an IBMer from India offered up ideas on water management based on a solution used in his grandfather's village for years.
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Community Relations
IBMers have distinguished themselves as committed and generous volunteers. They are part of a corporate tradition that spans generations and is rooted in the earliest days of IBM, when founder Thomas J. Watson, Sr., challenged his employees by word and example to stand for something that went beyond their professional lives.
They were supported by IBM's revolutionary new initiative in corporate philanthropy, which was created to increase the impact and value of their extraordinary efforts and to inspire even more IBMers worldwide to contribute their time and talents.
Called On Demand Community, the new initiative provides employees and retirees with on demand access to IBM technology, resources, training and support, designed specifically for volunteer efforts in public education and not-for-profit organizations. The outcome: Approaching its second anniversary, more than 50,000 employees and over 7,000 retirees in 67 countries have registered with the On Demand Community, sharing their skills and know-how with local organizations. Through the On Demand Community Web site, these volunteers have access to more than 150 tools — from science presentations for middle-school kids, to a school-based online mentoring program, to technology plans for not-for-profit organizations — to support their volunteer activities. This first-of-a-kind corporate program also provides technology grants, cash awards, and reduced prices in hardware and software to eligible organizations where employees and retirees volunteer.
The heart of On Demand Community is a corporate commitment to encourage and support volunteerism among employees and retirees who want to create positive change in their communities, whether it's teaching problem-solving skills, closing the digital divide, helping teachers use technology to make classroom lessons come alive, or making it easier for people with certain physical disabilities to access the Internet.
Sharing employees' skills and intellectual capital not only helps schools and organizations do their jobs more effectively, it also reinforces IBM's core values. Though the company's operations span the globe, IBM is first and foremost a local business deeply committed to the cities and towns where its employees live and work.
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