“Collaboration complexity, both internal and external, is crucial for all corporations in today's business environment more than ever”, elaborate ?

Coping with the complexity of today’s business environment is not about predicting the future or reducing risk. It’s about building the capacity, in yourself, your people, and the organization to adapt continuously and learn speedily, in order to maximize the chances of seizing fleeting opportunities

n these turbulent times, the question becomes: How can business leaders effectively cope with complexity

yes about travel and tours industry now faces more challenge and comptation from other agency and from travel air co. so all now try to give the best service to consumer

Thanks for the invitation. Excellent and comprehensive answers provided here. I just would like to mention a challenge that many professionals working in the sales field have. It's the dilemma of collaboration versus competition. Working in sales / sales management by nature is a competitive job. You need to be competing all the time with your fellow sales colleagues, with outside competitors and even sometimes with yourself to keep pushing yourself forward. How do we collaborate with others then if the very nature of our work is competitive? My take on this is stay competitive but find areas of collaboration with select professionals who can add to your knowledge, experience and skills. You don't have to collaborate with everybody, but at least with those who can add to your growth. Also, you can still collaborate with your clients to find new business needs for them and get referrals and recommendations. Another area of possible collaboration would be with your colleagues from different departments who are not directly involved in sales. 

Yes, the world is more global and linked then before. Business dynamics changing.

Since collaboration is a business necessity, organizations need to take measures to instill collaboration despite all the diverse individual needs. Some of the approaches that leaders in organizations adopt are:

1. Conducting team building events: This is the most widely used method, which may have instant impact but may not sustain.

2. Creating cross-functional groups: This is a powerful approach to bring together diverse people who otherwise may not come together to collaborate.

3. Team rewards: When designed well, team rewards create a ‘reason’ for individuals collaborate because they see that by winning together, the gain is for each individual as well. Thus reward binds the team together!

4. Job rotation: By moving people across functions, organizations create greater sensitivity and respect to each other. When I do not know what your job is, I may erroneously tend to overestimate what I do and underestimate what others do. Through job rotations, we can break this perception.

5. Knowledge sharing sessions: A quicker method to create mutual understanding is a structured knowledge-sharing session wherein each one shares about their job with others.

Interesting question.. it is true there is more complexity as much data can be scoured and information is available.

At the same time a huge contradiction as we invest in very tailor made information systems, with automatic voice response, automated scanning, data notification, e-processing, e-services, data collection, standard dashboards and reports, automated template responses.

I remember the old times where 2x a day you got mail from applications, responding by hand written letter on a vacant position first published internally and by high exemption outside in the newspaper (only Saturday hoping for a high response... your deadline was 2 weeks. All paperwork but I can not remember that as HR advisor and my assistant we were missing a candidate or responded properly first by mail, then standard templates>

 Now you receive tons of irrelevant emails, not hand written anymore, just Send/Forward and Catch,filtered and automated by a HR system... more or less complex? I guess yes, but it seems the personal touch became less important. Now we spend more time to scroll through our inboxes.

Every advantage has an impact, and needs to be reflected carefully to reduce the complexity.

As the business/sales world is changing fast both internal and external collaboration is very significant to survive in the business world and to achieve desired results. The information I collected below may be useful.

When we talk about collaboration or knowledge sharing, we often assume that this refers to what is occurring within the enterprise. The fact is that there are two types of collaboration: internal and external.

External collaboration occurs between a brand and its consumers via social media channels or platforms such as blogs, wikis, Twitter, or online communities. These dynamic platforms enable brands to search for ways to increase revenues, reduce costs, gain more efficiency and enhance customer service, and gain input and access to new people.

The connecting and sharing that takes place externally can also be leveraged within the workplace. Internal collaboration enables employees to enhance communication, improve productivity through document and file sharing, desktop sharing, chat, social networking and many other features that mobilize employees, business partners and internal communities to leverage the platform to stimulate action inside the firewall; the goal of course being to meet specific business objectives.

External and internal collaboration should demonstrate business impact across the organization. The goal with both types of collaboration is very similar: get people to collaborate in a way that provides tangible benefits to enterprises, while facilitating achievement of business objectives.

The key to a completely social business is integrating both internal and external collaboration strategies into the business plan. Both types of collaboration enable businesses to be more competitive and do things faster and more efficiently. Collaborating externally builds relationships with consumers, increases revenue, decreases research, product development and marketing costs, and improves customer service. Collaborating internally improves the company at its core. It connects people and advocates a sharing culture, thereby increasing team productivity, leveraging specialty knowledge that exists within the company and reducing decision-cycle times (among other things).

Some of the benefits of a completely social business:

·        Anyone internally can participate, creating an collective intelligence repository that can be used for external activities.

·        Platforms such as Crowdcast can be used for market predictions. The information can be shared to an external community to balance consumer expectations.

·        Discussions around ideas, opinions, and strategies can be created and feedback gathered internally and then used externally for marketing campaigns, sales strategies and other customer facing activities.

·        External community recommendations and ideas can be shared internally and evaluated for appropriate action.

·        Communication between internal and external communities can be facilitated; employees can speak with other employees, customers can speak with other customers, and employees and customers can speak with each other. This breaks down communication barriers and helps both customers and employees take action.

·        Valuable connections or relationships can be established internally that can enable new external relationships to be developed.

·        Top quality talent is attracted to companies that adopt and embrace new business and technology practices.

·        Customers are more likely to support companies that are known to have a caring reputation, and are interested in building long-term relationships with them.

We addressed the benefits of implementing an internal and external collaboration independent of each other and working in tandem. For companies to position themselves for success, essential ingredients to being a completely social business are:

·        Strategy comes first and the tools come second, not the other way around.

·        Focus on the business value, opportunity costs and risks. It's crucial for companies to understand the business objectives of creating internal and external collaborative communities.

·        Benchmark and set up a solid measurement framework that relates back to business objectives, i.e. increase productivity, increase sales, and/or reduce costs.

·        Cultivate and nurture a collaborative culture within the company.

·        Understand that this is a long-term process that requires a solid adoption plan. Make collaboration fun and reward participation.

·        Develop governance guidelines, and training programs around internal and external collaboration efforts to maintain cooperative rules of engagement.

The advent of internal and external collaboration to build and maximize business value is inevitable.  Learning to see the value in social software platforms and comprehensive strategies will position companies ahead of the competition. 

Thanks for invite i agree with MR TARIG  

thanks for invite agree with all answers

Not only in sales or service, all most in all businesses, we need to manage complexity either by collaboration or by other means.

I want to mention few points here, Be it technology transfer or sharing, wealth sharing or transfer, facility transfer or sharing, equipment sharing or transfer, it is very important to have collaboration with the needed agencies.

Coming to internal, it is very important for business functions to collaborate wisely on all aspects to challenge the competitors

Thanks for invitation,

I believe this view will repeat in each era,

because change is the real truth.

so in each era its own challenge is the most crucial challenge. for instance when the basics of Quality management appeared, most of the organizations start to obey the quality management standards and obligations. this flexibility happened for other theories such as customer oriented view , health and environment and,....

Therefore nowadays survival depends on collaboration and cope with new challenges. It is very crucial and we should be flexible and adaptive in each era. 

Fully agree with the answers.