Knowing when to implement some type of collaboration software is really, really tough.  That's unfortunate.  I sure wish it wasn't true.  For most, it's a fine line between collaboration and aggravation.  I can't say that I'm surprised.

When I talk to most people about collaboration, what they're really looking forward to doing is sharing documents with one another, no matter where they are, and having a repository for those documents that is easy to sort through and maybe having some business wrapped in with assignable tasks and shared calendars.  Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?  The problem is there are a lot of choices.  It takes some time to really look at what you're trying to get done and then make the decision of what to implement based around the most singular goal you can identify.

I remember when our firm was very excited that Microsoft's SharePoint started to get some traction, because frankly, before that when I told people that we offered collaboration software, they had no idea what I was really talking about.  Oh, don't get me wrong.  A lot of people would shake their head, smile and even have a conversation around collaboration software, but the fact is it was all surface level.

Microsoft's marketing and educational push to bring SharePoint down to a small business level had a whole lot of money behind it.  That was great for our business and lots of other firms like ours.  They had the money to provide education about how SharePoint could be implemented which did a lot of the heavy lifting for smaller companies like ours. To this day, I still always encourage anyone talking to us about collaboration to explore if SharePoint is something that might work for them.  Some implement it.  Some don't.  Some find they can't live without it.  And some tried it and now want nothing to do with it.

We did a lot of things wrong as we started to bring collaboration software to the commercial real estate space.  One of the biggest mistakes really was trying to bring a collaboration platform  to the commercial real estate space!  Really!  But I guess beating our heads against walls and putting ourselves in situations where prospects stared at us with zombielike looks on their faces taught us some good lessons and earned us a few stripes.  Heck, like they say, there are no overnight successes.  Our success was certainly more than a decade long.  All I can do is fall back on the virtues of the 3-P's;  passion, patience and persistence.

But here we are today in 2011.  And while there are a number of collaboration platforms out there, there are still not enough to make it a really easy story to share with commercial real estate firms, who by their very nature operate best when they are fairly autonomous and fairly small.  There is clearly a big need for our industry, given the fact that we have an enormous amount of paper as well as an enormous number of people that typically need to collaborate.  But commercial real estate remains a difficult market for collaboration.  Yes, today things are a little bit better.  I don't get the same glassy eyed stares that I once did and for that I am grateful for the efforts and money that was put behind SharePoint.  Like I said, I know people that can't live without it and I know people that have tried it and want nothing to do with it.  But it's all good because it's moving  forward the process of us being able to streamline what we do every day.  And as long as it's moving forward, I'm a happy girl.

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