When it comes to successful collaboration, creating the right culture and processes is as important as deploying the right technology.

In our increasingly global economy, good ideas can come from anywhere. New networking technologies offer tremendous collaboration potential, but your people and your company have to be prepared to take advantage of them.

Combining its own best practices with input from an international group of private and public sector organizations that have prioritized efforts centered on collaboration, Cisco developed the Cisco Collaboration Framework. Cisco itself used this guide to save US$691 million and increase productivity 4.9 percent in fiscal year 2008.

The Cisco Collaboration Framework provides a clear evolutionary path and a checklist of steps to take in order to increase and accelerate business value. The framework includes methods that you can use to improve knowledge sharing among employees, customers, and ecosystems of partners. Use the framework to learn how to take advantage of the rapidly expanding array of Web 2.0 and social networking technologies. Followed properly, the framework can dramatically improve your operations and potentially transform your business.

The key to successful business collaboration is the development of a concerted strategy that actively manages people and technology and develops and manages new organizational processes, workflows, and capabilities. Failing to do either will likely nullify many of the benefits that collaborative technologies have to offer while exposing your company to damage from uncontrolled content and haphazard processes.

The benefits are clear. Companies that successfully adopt new collaborative processes:

• Move faster
• Make smarter decisions
• Draw from a deeper well of knowledge
• Operate more effectively across time and distance barriers

The Cisco Collaboration Framework can help you develop a good strategy to move ahead of your competition.