IM HAS GONE CORPORATE

by Cutter Consortium

In the past few years, the explosion of the Internet has propelled instant messaging (IM) from chat room fixture to boardroom issue.

"The dramatic growth of consumer IM services from AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and others has triggered a secondary effect: IM has gone corporate," said Stowe Boyd, a Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium, who has been studying the corporate use of instant messaging. "As a result, the insecurity of public services -- lack of encryption, difficulties in authentication, and the possibility of insecure log files or intercepted content -- means that IM, one way or another, must be dealt with."

According to Boyd, it is often the younger workers who have brought IM into the corporate setting. IM is often considered by older people as a toy, something that is not relevant or useful for corporate purposes.

"These were the same arguments leveled against e-mail when that innovation began to take off. The same grassroots support by younger and more technology-oriented staff ran counter to security- minded corporate management, and the same issues of security, interoperability, customer receptiveness, and return on investment (ROI) were raised as a means to stop or slow the adoption of e-mail in the corporate setting," said Boyd.

The most conservative have argued that IM -- at least consumer IM products, like AOL -- should simply be turned off: a policy memorandum distributed, and IT ordered to remove the offending programs. This tactic may not prove to be practical, however, or even advisable. Says Boyd, "The reality is more complex, challenging, and ambiguous. IM is rapidly maturing into what is likely to be a powerful tool for enterprise communication, coordination, and collaboration. Development of a strategy for effectively exploiting IM will require an investment of time and energy, but the possibilities for a significant ROI are real and growing.

"There is a simple case to make for incorporating IM into enterprise initiatives like e-CRM, knowledge management, competitive response, supply chain management, and nearly every other time-critical aspect of the business: it is cheaper, faster, and more attractive to customers, partners, and staff than alternatives. At the same time, issues of security and confidentiality must drive any IM initiative, so a close audit of security needs must precede even the earliest pilot of IM technology."

Best practices for corporate IM are only beginning to emerge, but the following short list can help guide companies to plan for IM:

• In the short-term, deploy IM to support distributed project teams. Real-time communication can benefit teams that are too distributed to support fast, ad hoc interactions.
  
  
• Deploying IM for customer support can lead to real hard cost savings, well worth the effort involved.
  
  
• Conduct a communication chain analysis of your company. It will likely show that time-critical events, such as banks and brokerages responding to market events, energy companies responding to peak loads, manufacturing companies dealing with supply chain or logistics snafus, or service companies responding to customer requests, can be more effectively managed with the addition of IM technologies to current approaches. In almost every industry, there are examples of extremely time-critical issues where fast response has high payback.
  
  

Boyd concluded, "The technologies to support these activities are available today and are relatively mature. IM is no longer a toy but has matured into a powerful corporate tool that can create closer and more responsive relationships between your company, its partners, customers, and staff."

-- Cutter Consortium