Instant Messaging: The next wave in business communications

Shipra Arora / New Delhi

Employees peering relentlessly into their computer screens, seemingly killing time chatting with friends over MSN or Yahoo Messenger, is a familiar sight across many offices. The difference is that now the boss will not see red every time he sights an employee chatting online. What was once seen as eating away into the organisation’s productive time, Instant Messaging (IM) has acquired a new dimension—a tool for enhancing employee productivity, fostering team-building efforts and enabling cost-effective and speedy communication. Though the thought of striking important business deals over IM might be a little far-fetched, but driving complex business deals, interacting with project team members, discussing project details and nittie-grities, taking project approvals and seeking clarifications is a reality as of now.

Corporates are now consciously eyeing IM tools for improving communication process—thereby building close knit teams and improving employee relationships. It is an established medium of improving employee productivity. Instant Messaging, believe experts, is coming of age—from being a ‘teen fad’ to a corporate ‘must have’. Especially in case of IT software and services companies where projects need to be managed and delivered across multiple locations, IM tools are gaining popularity as an informal and, more recently, a formal communication channel.

Growing acceptance

Take for instance the case of Newgen Software. The company uses a host of IM tools, most prominent ones being Yahoo and MSN Messengers, for all its formal and informal communications, ranging from discussions and query redressal of employees and clients to fixing up the menu and venues for birthday parties and get-togethers. The communication can be within the company or with outsiders— clients, vendors, dealers, business associates, resellers, etc. CSC India is using IBM’s ‘Lotus Sametime’ IM tool.

Kale Consultants, which has a corporate Intranet with Microsoft .Net meeting embedded as the IM tool, encourages its employees to use it for intra-office communications. In addition to this, a large number of the support staff interacts over publicly available tools like Yahoo Messenger and MSN.

Infosys has Microsoft Instant Messenger based on Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, which is used as a communication tool within the organisation to exchange short informal messages. The company, however, does not use it for official purposes.

While none of these companies has plans to replace e-mail as the primary channel for both formal and informal communication, these examples testify the growing acceptability of IM within the corporate culture.

Driving factors

Organisations having offices at multiple locations are now leveraging IM to keep disparate teams together. In addition to this, with projects getting more complex and demanding, IM tools are being looked upon to provide the much-needed collaboration to simplify the process. According to Balaji G S Rao, senior manager—Systems, Computers & Communications Division, Infosys Technologies, “IM is a ‘nice to have’ feature, especially for short informal messages instead of an e-mail. Given that it is instant, it is useful for members of the same project team who may not be physically in the same location.” Diwakar Nigam, managing director of Newgen Software Technologies further adds that IM tools are used by all, including the company’s global clients, vendors and business associates. They find it very easy to communicate and discuss all their business problems and solutions over it.

The advantages are: It is almost a real-time communication, which is simple and user-friendly. It is also instantaneous, easy to use and cheap, and also helps in multi-tasking and collaboration as multiple people can chat at the same time with one another.

Building stronger teams

Companies are trying to put these characteristic features of IM to the best use to foster better employee relationships and accelerate team-building efforts. This includes posting birthday messages, wishing anniversaries or simply chatting with colleagues. An HR consultant points out that constant communication through IM helps in developing a better understanding at a personal level, thereby helping in building stronger teams. The informality leads to open discussion on matters which one might otherwise be reluctant to discuss in a formal environment.

HR managers are now trying to intensify the use of IM to develop better emp-loyee relationships. However, Sanjeev Bhatia—general manager IT infrastructure, CSC India, feels that though IM is a tool for better and faster communication (in particular informal), it still cannot replace traditional team-building and motivational tools for better employee relationship and overall work culture improvement.

Enable collaborative efforts

Organisations have now consciously started using IM as a tool for more collaborative business work among project teams and started integrating it with their business process targeted towards improving productivity and driving down the communication costs. In this light the use of IM is gaining even more significance.

This trend is likely to catch up in the future. Viral Raval, vice president—Networking & Systems, Kale Consultants, says that the spontaneity which IM offers can be formalised through e-mails.

With improved security and message archival features, IM may qualify to be a platform for collaboration and business transactions, points out Rao. “It is a good platform for online consultation. The interactive nature of IM helps in reducing the cycle time, especially in system troubleshooting scenarios,” he adds.

Apart from utilities like discussing project details, taking project approvals and client recommendations, IM tools are also becoming a part of other processes such as Knowledge Management (KM) where it is used for instant knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Formal vs Informal

Presently communication over IM is mostly informal in nature, as it is still in the early stages of evolution in the corporate environment to take on the mantle of a truly formalised business communication tool. Being a form of instant chat, IM is generally meant for informal communication. For instance, at CSC, informal communication is about 80 percent of the total pie. According to Nigam, it may take sometime in diffusion and acceptance before IM can be used as a tool for formal communication.

Bhatia however adds that formal communications are fast gaining grounds with screen and whiteboard sharing, attending meeting facility, etc. Organisa-tions have started coming out with IM tools, which can be used for formal communication as well. For companies like Kale Consultants, for instance, a greater percentage of the communication, i.e., almost 75 percent, is used for important tasks and only formal internal communication happens on this. “IM tools are demanded to be used by users who have a need,” says Vinayak Kamath, senior VP—HR, Kale Consultants.

E-mail vs IM

As IM is still far from being accepted as a means to communicate formally, there seems to be little threat to e-mail as the most widely used business communication tool.

For Kale Consultants, e-mail is still a widely used tool, mainly because of the confidentiality and its ability to do cataloging. The company has more serious interactions on e-mail and voice calls and IM is mainly used by ground level and onsite staff to interact with base office on some critical issues.

Rao states that IM may qualify as a platform for collaboration and business transactions, but cannot replace e-mail, which will stay as the primary business communication tool. Bhatia believes that e-mail communication will still be preferred till the concerns of security and intra-platform communications over IM are addressed.

Experts believe that though IM may not be able to override e-mail as the most formal and preferred communication tool, its relative advantages of spontaneity and interactivity will enable it to play a complimentary role to e-mail communication. That is what most organisations are looking at—a balance of both e-mail and Instant Messaging communication.

IM can offer spontaneity, which can be formalised over an e-mail. While the ongoing project can be discussed over IM, the details can be sent through

e-mail later. Similarly, while IM can help in immediate bug fixing, permanent solutions can be arrived at by communicating through an e-mail.

The IM Advantage

IM allows improved communication and enhanced productivity in the following ways: As it is instant and in real-time the person does not have to wait for responses. Can give response and get an acknowledgement from the recipient instantaneously. Being an n-way communication involving multiple people makes collaboration possible. Also provides solution to most queries at the same time by mutual discussion. Files can be transferred online in real-time without waiting for receiving e-mails. As queries are resolved quickly, issues don’t keep pending, saving in precious time and improving overall productivity. Great tool for multitasking. You are on a phone call, addressing some user and you get a IM message. You can still respond to it. Presence awareness: People can see who is online, so they don’t waste time swapping e-mail or voice mail with people who aren’t available.

shipra@expresscomputeronline.com