Corporate Adoption of Instant Messenger
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I'm in that place where IM is about to die out at our company. We're using OpenFire and Spark as the client and probably have less than 20 active users of IM. It's time to move OpenFire to its own Linux box and get it off Windows so we can start using it for multiple sites (which has not worked well on Windows - another discussion entirely).
It will have to be low priority because while I enjoy using IM almost all day long, our executives pretty much hate it and refuse to use it. Maybe they see it as one more interruption, but I prefer IM for quick questions over e-mail.
Do you find that upper management at your company shies away from using IM and tends to prefer e-mail, phone calls, or face-to-face conversations? In your mind, why do people dislike it so much?
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Last year we introduced the Openfire and Spark to management but they refused to use it. So we are still using Skype for internal/ external communication.
I think people tend to dislike because they refuse to learn how to use it. Just
Side note: learning new things, i;e using new application or process is our big problem, When we introduce to them they always refuse..
my two cents. -
I've seen pretty good adoption. In this day and age it is hard to imagine needing to convince anyone to use it. I've seen heavy adoption in everything from tiny companies to the Fortune 10.
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At McAfee, IM was very popular. For the very reason you like it, that's why everyone else liked it. I would still say management did most things by email or walking up to your desk, but they were not adverse to IM. I completely agree with it.
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I showed Openfire and Spark (even Lync) to our management team at one of the meetings. The feedback was less then good, some even calling it a waste of company resources... Not sure how I could convince them otherwise as it seems like a much better solution then email for the quick questions, or come to think of it almost every communication.
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Many "old school" business people really like that personal touch. They would much rather come talk to you face to face. They want to be acknowledged not just a quick yup I will do that.
These are the same people that had a hard time adjusting to email I am sure.
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hmm.. I find myself kinda in the middle. I use both email and IM a lot, but the idea of deploying IM in my office to me personally is undesirable because I believe that it would just be a way for people to gossip all day long, and not offer a real benefit to the company. When discussed with management, they mentioned this too.
IM while it can have history, it's more difficult to search for things - such as a request to do something. So the users have to be be more on top of creating a reminder to do the request in another resource (calendar) instead of just staying within the email environment itself. I tag emails with due dates nearly daily, this is a vary convenient solution.
At the same time I use IM daily to get quick answers from those outside my office, other IT folks. Though I can definitely understand how it can become a distraction to your work routine.
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@Dashrender said:
hmm.. I find myself kinda in the middle. I use both email and IM a lot, but the idea of deploying IM in my office to me personally is undesirable because I believe that it would just be a way for people to gossip all day long, and not offer a real benefit to the company.
This is the same logic that I give for why I feel that everyone should be work from home and not in an office. Whenever I go into a large office I realize that there are no real meetings, just people talking about sports and gambling. Sometimes sports gambling. Nothing but a waste of time.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
hmm.. I find myself kinda in the middle. I use both email and IM a lot, but the idea of deploying IM in my office to me personally is undesirable because I believe that it would just be a way for people to gossip all day long, and not offer a real benefit to the company.
This is the same logic that I give for why I feel that everyone should be work from home and not in an office. Whenever I go into a large office I realize that there are no real meetings, just people talking about sports and gambling. Sometimes sports gambling. Nothing but a waste of time.
Yes, but without large corporate offices, how are you to impress the potential clients? It's all a farce to be honest...
