Through the fog... Will IM stand for 'isolated messaging'?

How do you implement IM properly? Follow some straightforward steps, says Quocirca's Clive Longbottom...

As seen over the past few weeks in silicon.com, instant messaging (IM) is infiltrating the corporate space, raising issues of security and how these 'live' communications can be audited. We also have the problem that in many cases IM has not been implemented by the company in any planned manner – it is just that AOL IM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and other tools have crept in as users have seen the possibilities of the medium through its usage at home.

As always with collaboration and communication tools, the main problem seems to be a lack of suitable corporate policies and procedures being in place. Many companies just expect communication to happen – after all, we have all been talking since an early age and, therefore, we have been communicating. We’ve also been talking to each other a lot – so obviously, we must be collaborating.

Even those companies that are more enlightened seem to expect the right tools to be used at the right time – and that any interaction between tools does not seem to matter. The problem is that communication requires skills and because there is not just a single tool out there to communicate everything you want, controls need to be put in place.

That all means we need a set of policies and procedures. But covering what? Well collaboration and communications covers a hell of a lot of space, so we need to look at the tools that we have at our disposal, including email, telephone, fax, paper mail, meetings and more besides. Instant messaging is only one tool in the full armoury – but it still needs to be looked at.

With all of these tools at our disposal, we then need to look at fitness for function – and we need to educate the user base on what tool should be used when. Using IM indiscriminately is akin to using a chisel as a screwdriver – it may just about do the job but one slip and you can end up being hurt. In this case, it’s the business that can end up getting hurt – either commercially or legally. Both risks need to be minimised.

From a corporate point of view, the choice of the right type of IM is also important – just allowing indiscriminate downloads of consumer products moves control out of your hands and makes for a completely chaotic environment. Interactions will be important – contextuality of presence (awareness) is important – being able to see whether a contact is online, what their status is and how they prefer to be interacted with.

Integrated IM systems will be far better here – such as IBM Lotus with Domino Instant Messaging (SameTime), the latest version of Microsoft SharePoint or Polycom’s Office product. Each of these tools integrates the IM into the main directory services, enables full contextuality of a person’s state and also enables higher levels of security than found in base consumer-focused products.

In addition, the use of full auditing tools enabling the logging of sessions is under the control of a central administrator, so minimising the impact of IM being used inappropriately – and so also minimising the risk of legal issues down the line.

Then there’s how you want to utilise IM – is this just for within the organisation? How about discussing contracts with suppliers? How about dealing with the customer who just needs that little bit of extra help to finalise their online web purchase? Without the policies in place to address the multiple ways in which IM can be used, chaos will reign – and the customer will be deemed to be right.

Let us take, as an example, a customer wanting to buy an endowment over the internet. (OK, not many would want to that now, but stick with me.) The customer fills in the form but just wants to check a few details. Through the use of IM, an advisor on the help desk comes to the rescue – and let’s say that in this case the information provided by the advisor closes the deal. Hurrah - a new customer.

Now let’s roll the clock forward 10 years – suddenly the customer’s crying foul – they feel that the endowment was mis-sold. Although you as the vendor can provide the form that was filled in – along with all the 6-point text about investments can go down as well as up and that the value of the endowment can not be guaranteed - the customer just has to say “The person I spoke to said not to pay any attention to that – the endowment would easily beat expectations”. Without the proof to the contrary, the customer would probably win.

Sounds familiar? Should do. This is what has happened based on the selling of endowments 15 years ago, although the claim for these is that the discussion took place face to face with the endowment advisor.

So ensure that IM sessions can be recorded – and make sure that customers/suppliers are aware of the fact, for other legal reasons. Ensure that you have written in to your corporate communication and collaboration policies that internal chats may be monitored and/or recorded – in the same way as emails can be read or people leaving the building may have their bags and clothing searched.

Now is the time to control IM usage – Quocirca’s research shows there is strong growth of ad hoc usage within organisations across Europe. Leave it too late and it will become a major problem in trying to rein in everyone’s usage.

Control it now and many users will thank you for offering a service that they have not fully utilised before. Those who have already started using it can be educated into what the strengths and weaknesses of the tool are.

Make sure that the tools chosen integrate into the rest of your communication and collaboration environment – an island of functionality just serves to confuse the environment more.

By all means, use IM to gain market differentiation or to improve the communications capabilities for you and your company. But don’t be surprised if it all goes wrong due to lack of planning and the application of common sense. Be proactive, ensure that you have the bases covered and then use the technologies to enlarge your business – with a minimised risk of having to cover yourself sometime in the future.

For Quocirca's 'What's the fuss about...?' series for silicon.com, see this page

And for their earlier 'Surviving the Recession' series, see this page.