Connectivity Articles

Today’s successful organizations are thinking about how to fuel collaboration strategies to accelerate innovation and achieve success. According to research by Frost & Sullivan, companies that prioritize organizational collaboration experience customer satisfaction ratings that improve by an impressive 41% as well as a significant boost in sales, with an increase of 27%.  Additional research illustrates that businesses with a collaboration strategy were twice as likely to outgrow their competitors.

In fact, many notable companies offer first-rate examples of how collaborative company culture impacts exceptional results with gains in efficiency, quality of work, innovation, and overall job satisfaction. For example, according to a Cisco internal survey, increased collaboration efforts improved employee engagement by 9% and workplace productivity by 14%. Cisco estimates that this incremental productivity is worth $811 million annually.

Read on for important steps to implement collaboration at your organization along with a Dark Fiber Connectivity Case Study showing how Lightpath employs a collaborative culture that enables us to provide solutions that better meet and often exceed customer expectations.

Here are 5 steps to implement collaboration to strategically accelerate innovation and successful outcomes.

1. Lead with a clear vision. Management at all levels should regularly prioritize, promote, and support building and maintaining a collaboration culture as a tool to achieve organizational goals.
2. Break down silos. Create collaborative teams to identify collaboration opportunities and create new collaborative processes throughout the organization. This can occur between employees, across functional groups, as well as with customers throughout their customer journey. Establish milestones and review regularly to measure effectiveness and enhance processes.
3. Leverage technology to facilitate collaborative communication across geographies. Use collaboration tools such as Teams, Zoom, etc.  Meeting and productivity tools, including Instant Messaging and sharing apps, can create the best platforms for productive collaborative meetings.
4. Encourage open dialogues, questioning, innovative thinking, and accountability. Include everyone to participate in the brainstorming and collaboration process to promote innovation.
5. Publicize and reward collaborative successes internally. Celebrate achievements publicly with specifics on what was done and the outcomes. Even highlight roadblocks and how the team collaborated to resolve them.

Collaboration Case Study

At Lightpath, our dedication to building a culture of collaboration throughout our organization is intrinsic to our ability to provide innovative solutions, superior service delivery, and an unsurpassed customer journey experience.

For example, recently, a healthcare customer was searching for a connectivity solution that could provide their multiple locations with the highest levels of reliability and security to meet critical connectivity needs. Various other vendors had told them they did not have the type of existing fiber connectivity to provide such a solution to their particular locations. Then Lightpath stepped in.  Using a consultative approach with the customer, Lightpath cross-functional teams assessed the hospital’s strategic need for fast, secure, and reliable transport of a growing amount of data and images.

Next, Lightpath solutions teams from IT, Engineering, Product, and Service Delivery collaborated on a solution that included Dark Fiber connectivity for predictable throughput performance, reliability, speed, and security for the customer’s multiple locations while offering easily implementable increased bandwidth for expected future data growth.  As soon as the solution was accepted by the customer, the Service Delivery team was prepared to coordinate the timely implementation of new Dark Fiber for their locations.

“This solution was a game changer for the hospital and necessary for them to achieve their goals of providing continued excellent, timely healthcare to their community”, said Kenneth Florenz. “The cross-functional collaboration we have established at Lightpath helps us serve our customers better, as every team member is in lockstep to improve work processes, develop faster solutions, and react nimbly to any problems that may arise.”

With Lightpath as your strategic network partner, you can count on our collaborative strategic network partner approach to support your continued success. Talk to a dedicated Lightpath Account Executive to schedule your strategic planning session or contact us at 877-544-4872 today to learn more.