IBM Verse to transform the way we work

IBM pitched the benefits of its brand new $100 million office collaboration software, IBM Verse in Hong Kong. The platform, which IBM claims is the first-of-a-kind, integrates many of the communication and office-based tools into a single collaboration environment across multiple devices.

Whereas offices often deal with multiple platforms to deal with different tasks, speaking to a media delegation, Sino Lum, Senior Manager Enterprise Social Solutions & Smarter Workforce Social Unit, IBM insisted, “IBM Verse offers one single platform—it allows you to integrate it altogether.” He added, “IBM included some intelligent features which means that you can help customers, prioritise your tasks, find out who are the most important people and what are the most important things for you today.”

Building its concept around people, not email, the new system hopes to make it easier for colleagues to collaborate on projects and have all tools, previously scattered across multiple platforms, integrated into one, easy-to-use programme. As such, employees can connect with email, calendar, to-do lists, social networks, IM, online meetings and documents in one platform. With this, departments such as HR can save the time on administration and have the ease of tracking and managing projects and tasks more effectively.

As well as helping businesses with the management of tasks, the roll out of IBM Verse has provided a new interesting dynamic and model to training staff. As Lum explained, “Compared with traditional implementation, it is totally different. You usually have to set up the class and everyone comes in and prepares, brings in notebooks—but now there is no need. You create a community—place video files in folders and create video conferences time slots, allow them to join at any time and you can also ask questions to a specific email account.” Such innovations include a dedicated ‘Teacher Trainer’ or ‘TT’ in each company trained by IBM who support colleagues with learning materials and creating an ‘Ask Expert’ email which employees can submit questions to.

With digitalisation being unavoidable, the roll out of IBM Verse offers interesting food for thought about how HR can adapt to the new digital age and use it to their advantage to reduce time-consuming administration and think about new ways to train staff.