Working together, apart - benefits of using E-mail

Home Office Computing, Oct, 1994 by Wayne Jr. Rash

SUSAN FLOWERS IS AMONG THE NEW BREED OF WORKers who collaborate with people they rarely see. The president of a corporate communications consultancy in Annandale, Virginia, Flowers has just one employee--and he's in Saint Louis near one of her biggest clients.

According to Flowers, this arrangement is made possible through the wonders of modern telecommunications. Since she can't be at every customer site at the same time, "the technology we use allows us to deliver the best value to our clients," she explains.

For many businesses, remote collaborations take the form of businesses whose principals live thousands of miles apart, temporary partnerships created with outside contractors or companies, or employees who simply work at home most of the time, wherever that home may be. In any case, the physical location of the worker becomes less important than the performance of the actual work.

Old-Fashioned E-Mail For most people who work apart, the primary means of communication is e-mail. It's cheap, easy to use, and nearly everyone with a computer and modem has access to e-mail in one form or another. The simplest way to use e-mail is through a provider such as MCI Mail or an online service such as CompuServe or America Online.

Flowers receives artwork from her stable of freelance graphic artists electronically, reviews it, and uses e-mail to deliver the work to her clients. "We send all of our drafts, planning documents, and newsletters that way," she says. For her customers' convenience, Flowers uses each one's specific e-mail system. This isn't always necessary, however. Since most online services are interconnected through the Internet, information can be widely exchanged among them. In addition, such files are frequently sent in compressed form, both to reduce the time required to send them and to cut costs charged by the services that carry material among Flowers, her staff, and her customers.

"We make our decisions via e-mail, because you can think before you respond," says Andy S. Finkel, a principal of Obvious Implementation in Downing-town, Pennsylvania. The company's seven principals are spread through the country--Pennsylvania, Nevada, California, and North Carolina. Obvious Implementation, which develops software, also supports its products through e-mail and through forums on CompuServe and BIX (an online service run by Delphi Internet Services that serves a large number of independent consultants).

The Electronic Huddle E-mail has the advantage of being time independent. That is, one person can add something to a discussion, but the other person doesn't need to read the message until it becomes convenient for him. The problem with e-mail, though, is that covering complex topics can take a long time, especially if large groups are involved, and trying to make sense of the ensuing conversations can be cumbersome.

One solution is to consolidate the discussion by moving it to a bulletin board service or to a private forum on a commercial online service, such as CompuServe, America Online, or Delphi. There, discussions take the form of a series of messages that everyone can read and to which anyone can respond. On America Online, for example, meeting participants enter a lobby area, then type in a predecided name to enter a private room. Once there, participants put in comments at the bottom of the screen, then click the Send button so the message appears on the screen for all to read.

Consultant David Stabb, president of Infinity Link Corp., believes strongly in these virtual gatherings. The firm, headquartered near Philadelphia, has corporate officers scattered in five locations in four states. "We hold almost all of our meetings electronically," explains Stabb. Infinity Link uses the online conferencing facilities of the Internet and other services, such as BIX and CompuServe. Stabb says that the process makes meetings easy to arrange and even easier to chronicle for the corporate records. "All of our officer meetings, operating meetings, and personnel interviews for subcontractors are held online," Stabb notes.

Such means of online cooperation don't work for everyone. "It's fine as long as the discussion doesn't get heated," Stabb admits. Ira Emus, president of Extrasensory Software in Sherman Oaks, California, isn't so sure that such conferencing works even that well. "I hate the idea," Emus says, "I can talk a lot faster than I can type, and I listen a lot faster than they type."

Sharing Files Across the Wire

An alternative to meeting online--desktop document conferencing--combines onscreen collaboration with the advantages of a verbal conversation. This lets people at each end of a phone conversation see the same file on their screens. Much like using a whiteboard in a meeting room, both parties can draw on the screen using their mouse pointers, add written comments, or even call up additional images--all while discussing the file on the phone.

Until recently, most of these systems required expensive high-speed data lines to allow the shared information to be transferred fast enough. But this expensive requirement has been solved, both by faster modems and by conferencing software such as Intel's ProShare, versions of which will work over lower speed connections. Most importantly, ProShare Standard Edition is designed to be easy to use and affordable ($99, suggested list). Because the program's interface is so simple, people familiar with Windows normally can start using ProShare without training. ProShare Premiere Edition ($299), an advanced version, can support application sharing, meaning that people on each end of the call can use a program such as Word for Windows or Excel that's running on only one of the two computers.