Home featured Featured Small Business Strategy Featured Technology-enabled collaboration no longer a ‘nice to have’ in the modern business world James Harkness April 10, 2017 As workforces become more and more geographically dispersed, organisations need to support ‘distributed collaboration’ (i.e. the ability for people to work together as a team remotely) to survive, according to Jeff Rodman, co-founder of multinational video collaboration company Polycom. Rodman told Dynamic Business that the impact of digital transformation, including the shift from away traditional offices to open, technology-enabled environments, has meant that in order to remain competitive, businesses of all sizes need to rethink their workspaces and culture. In particular, he said businesses need to adopt new ways of working that facilitate and accelerate collaboration: “It’s is a key driver of productivity in that it enables staff to leverage one another’s resources, spot one another’s errors, divide work more efficiently, and produce more total output in a shorter time.” Noting the increasing use of contractors by organisations, globally, as well as the growing demand for flexible working conditions amongst workers, Rodman said ‘distributed collaboration’ is transforming from a ‘nice to have’ option into a ‘survival tool’ for businesses. “Companies that are slow to adopt and support a ‘work-from-anywhere’ approach will – not to put too fine a point on it – fade, sooner or later,” he said. “What companies need to keep in mind is that getting the most (and the best) output from their workers – not the most hours clocked – is