The IoT already empowers employees with increased business productivity – getting them the information they need, when they need it, in order to keep business moving, and to inform good decision-making. The IoT can also disempower employees and decrease productivity by overwhelming them with information, both important (signal) and non-important (noise).
So how can we manage the IoT to ensure that we receive the information truly needed – rather than whatever happens to show up on our myriad of communications channels?
It’s a hard task, and getting harder each year as the number of information channels proliferate, and as the volume of messages on each channel grows.
Devices connected to the IoT are enabling an ever-increasing set of automated alerts – many of which I want, such as reports from our CRM system, and of course notifications from IoT devices like my watch, reminding me it’s time to stand up and take a break.
Signal vs. Noise
What’s signal and what’s noise varies based on context, it’s a fluid division. If I’m in an executive meeting, almost any interruption is noise. I won’t care about a new Twitter follower, or a reminder to exercise.
There’s the real danger that as the signal/noise ratio gets worse, workers will tune out. When the watch, wristband or phone buzzes, you start to ignore it… and the messages pile up. “You have 157 new voicemails.” We all remember: it was best to hit “delete all” and rationalize that if it was really important, they’d call back.
Another unpleasant alternative: people will turn off the notifications and messaging systems. I’ve already aggressively unsubscribed to just about anything that I can. Anything, anything, to cut back on the noise
IoT comes to the Enterprise: An Agent of Change for Better Business Communications
We need a communications platform designed, from the ground up, to filter and prioritize messages. We need to make sure that our messaging platforms respond to our employees’ needs, rather than forcing our employees to adapt to the limitations of their messaging platforms.
My vision is of a system that helps filter the noise, while delivering the signal in ways that are smarter and more relevant to workers – whether via email, mobile phones, apps or the IoT.
The whole point of modern communications platforms is to enhance business efficiency. Most platforms today get that exactly backwards – it’s too easy to add noise.
Take, for example, the notion of hashtags. Think about how hashtags can help prioritize internal business messages — such as letting a manager flag all correspondence relating to the #SmithProposal or #DailySalesReport or #RegulatoryAudit — irrespective of whether it’s an email, a conference call, an internal news feed, or an automated alert from the CRM system.
Businesses can learn more from social media by studying what works. How about @mentions that let you know when you are mentioned in an internal business message, so you know to chime in? Or $messages (also called cashtags) that let you know about specific securities or businesses? How about configuring alert preferences – including vibrations and sounds – for specific categories of messages, and being able to alter those based on where you are, what time it is, and what you’re doing?
Most important, how about setting up a user-centric cockpit where each employee can control his or her message preferences, filters and priorities – and where messages from all different streams can be aggregated, searched, shared, and archived.
It's a big vision, to be sure, but the signal/noise ratio is a big problem. Messaging companies need to provide our customers features to surface the signal. Too many car photos, not enough critical information on KPIs and workflow. We can change it. Now’s the time, before the IoT fire hose knocks us all down.
About the Author: David Gurle is an author, inventor and leader. His ideas have influenced trends in enterprise communications for the last 15 years. He defined Microsoft’s unified communications strategy (Skype for Business) and, as head of collaboration services at ThomsonReuters, introduced federated communications to the financial services industry. Before founding Perzo/Symphony, he was VP and GM of Skype’s Enterprise Business.
Edited by
Ken 'Master of All That He Surveys' Briodagh
