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The workplace of the future
What is important for the workplace of the future? For an electronic workplace (eWorkplace), the answer is the following three fields of technology:

• information integration,
• collaboration and
• activity management.

Information integration

The integration of data and processes from line of business applications into personal office applications (e.g. Excel, Word or Lotus Notes) is rapidly gaining ground. It enables employees to access line of business applications from a familiar environment and also to merge data from multiple applications.

Information integration enables users to adapt their work environments to their individual needs, and they can access data from their current work context without having to switch to another application.

One example of information integration is the integration of SAP into the Lotus Notes environment with reference to the CATS time reporting process. IBM provides a new standard interface as part of the Lotus Notes template. Using this interface, employees can enter their hours worked directly into SAP via the familiar Lotus Notes calendar instead of having to enter the data twice – once in the Lotus Notes calendar and again in SAP.

Collaboration

In the future, employees will increasingly collaborate in teams with members at different locations, in different time zones and possibly working for different companies, and the need for highly integrated collaboration tools will increase as a result. In other words, the users need new ways of collaborating, such as Wikis, blogs or Excel-to-web solutions.

Wiki technology, the best known example of which is the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, enables users to collaboratively work on a document. Bayer Business Services and Bayer MaterialScience used jointly Wiki technology to draft a specification. The advantage of the technology is that all participants were able to work on the document simultaneously, greatly accelerating the process. Once complete, a PDF file was generated for archiving.

Activity management

The management of daily activities (in association with operating business processes, meeting minutes, etc.) requires tools that enable employees to work more efficiently. The eWorkplace helps to categorize and prioritize business activities.