For the majority of their careers, these athletes are sworn adversaries who would rather die than share their tactical secrets with their opposition. But for two incredible months, they all pull in the same direction and develop a strategy that will allow them to overcome their opponents.

In business, we often set different departments their own targets and expect them to pursue these goals independently. But a modern company is surely better served by working together in pursuit of one overarching goal, with each employee and department focusing on how best they can contribute to the team effort.

We should encourage resource sharing and place the use of internal social networks such as Podio at the heart of our wider business strategy. We can achieve a great deal working alone or in small networks, but we can achieve so much more if we are all working as part of one harmonious team.

Most importantly, by encouraging an open culture within our company, we can see what other aspects of the business are doing and where we can help out. It also allows us to better identify where specialist skills are when we need them.

It’s far better to know that John in HR is also a great amateur photographer when I need shots of a new event than to spend time and money on an external photographer who won’t be as familiar with the company’s approach to business.

This ethos can and should extend to the way we deal with our suppliers, freelancers and contractors. Rather than giving them the bare minimum, we should look to share as much information as possible and see what opportunities this opens up. Collaboration and openness are the future of business, and the sooner we recognise this, the larger our headstart on rivals will be.

So here’s this week’s challenge to you: the next time you have to tackle a big, new project, take an hour at the outset to figure out what skills or resources other departments within your business may have to offer. Use Podio to establish a discussion around your objectives and how they benefit the wider company, and I’m sure you’ll be amazed by what you can accomplish.

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I’m delighted to announce that William Bellis has won our competition. Well done, William! With summer on the way, now is the perfect time to escape the office and discover the benefits of flexible working.

Thanks to all who entered. Be sure to look out for our future competitions as well as my regular posts with tips and tricks for maximising productivity. Enjoy the sunshine!

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This got me thinking – when would you use this “The Jetsons meets Dictaphone” capability? Seems like anytime you only have one hand free would make sense, plus a few other occasions when it simply feels like a good idea.

1. You’re walking the dog.
2. You’re holding onto the pole on the subway/bus.
3. Your other hand is in a cast.
4. You’re eating something you can’t put down (like a pita or ice cream cone).
5. You’re holding a drink at a party.
6. You’re playing cards.
7. You’re holding a baby.
8. You want to impress your date/potential in-laws/boss.
9. You stink at texting.
10. You’re just in too big of a hurry to type.

Note that “You’re driving” is not on the list – let’s keep both hands on the wheel, folks.

Want to learn more about how it works? Read the GoToMyPC Mobile Voice Input fact sheet.

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Citrix will be offering GoToMyPC through our Japanese partners KDDI Corporation and Ascentech K.K., leading distributors of cutting-edge business technology in Japan who will not only deliver the solution to customers but also provide localized customer support.

Why now?

While KDDI and Ascentech had previously partnered with Citrix to deliver other solutions to the Japanese market, it wasn’t until after the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear reactor meltdown disaster that the continued business access and disaster recovery capabilities of GoToMyPC became imperative. The scope of 3/11 was the catalyst for KDDI to explore other remote access tools available in the market and they found that GoToMyPC was more robust than the rest. And they realized that other companies would appreciate that robustness as well. All it needed was to be translated into Japanese, which we were happy to do.

In addition to their increased awareness of business continuity, Japanese enterprises are very conscious of data security. To ensure proper governance, most of their critical information is stored on desktop machines or servers within the traditional four walls of their company. That’s why when we did live demos of GoToMyPC to our prospective partners, they were most impressed by its screen sharing capability – they liked that they could actually see and interact with their entire desktop and access all the information and functions they needed to work.

Our hope is that once businesses in Japan see how GoToMyPC safeguards data, they will consider the benefits of enabling workers to adopt a more mobile workstyle. In a nation where so many people commute long distances, and where so many people carry the latest technology in their pockets, there is a great opportunity to use the GoToMyPC mobile apps to make the most of their time. Then, GoToMyPC could be employed not just as an occasional business continuity tool, but also as an everyday productivity enhancer.

What’s next?

Today’s launch of GoToMyPC in Japan is part of an ongoing global expansion for Citrix SaaS products. We look forward to continued growth in Europe and Asia, and hope to develop a presence in Brazil in time to help its businesses stay productive through the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

Meanwhile, we are eager to see how the Japanese receive GoToMyPC. Perhaps, in a few years their commuter trains won’t be so crowded, thanks to people using GoToMyPC to work remotely, and the people on those trains will be using GoToMyPC to get their work done faster.

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As a society, we’re reluctant to consider changing the way we work, yet the way we work is constantly evolving. Believe it or not, working in offices is a recent trend, and although it’s hard to imagine a future without it, just think how alien our modern-day offices would seem to people from ancient Rome.

In fact, working from home or a non-office environment has been the norm for most of human history. We still fondly refer to cottage industries, but for many people this was a way of life – their home and work spaces intertwined.

Throughout history, the idea of a centralised office where everyone went to work was primarily confined to local and central governments. Offices were somewhere for tax collectors, scribes and other bureaucrats to keep up with the day-to-day business of the administration. Merchants and guilds only adopted the idea of a central hub during the middle ages.

The office as we know it, like so much of our modern society, came about as a result of the industrial revolution. The need to keep track of a multi-stage manufacturing process and often complex accounting procedures made a single work site for overseeing a company’s operations necessary. The rise of the office was also facilitated by technology, with the telegram, telephone and typewriter all making these hubs more practical and efficient.

This change through technology convinces us at Citrix that our current office environment doesn’t represent an end point. We believe the future working environment will be fundamentally about choice. Each individual employee will decide where is best to work from and what tools are needed to do a job well. For some this will be a spare room at home, for others their local coffee shop.

Still more will choose to continue to work from the office, but they may put their own twist on their surroundings. They may opt for a stand-up desk or even no desk at all, working wherever they can find a space and somewhere to charge their laptop. This choice is why we’re committed to developing tools to help you work with your colleagues wherever you are and however you want, whether that’s meeting remotely or collaborating on a shared task list.

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But the potential of IM in business has not been fully realized. Often employees in the same company are using different programs, and often Instant Messaging is not rolled out universally to all employees or even within teams. Let’s not forget your partners and clients outside your company. How do you chat with them? Before long you have to log in to three or four different instant messengers – all disconnected from your real work – just to keep up with all your contacts. As a result, most IM programs become silos of information, and you don’t have all your chat logs in one convenient place.

Podio Chat is changing that, and it is out now. (Try it yourself by logging in or signing up at podio.com.) It’s built to bring instant messaging to the source of your work – right where you plan and execute your projects and workflows. You can use it to chat with any of your co-workers and external contacts on Podio without pop-ups or a separate login, and all your chats are stored as ongoing conversations inside Podio, so you never lose valuable input or files you’ve shared.

Like other Podio features, Chat works on the web at podio.com and on the mobile apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. So you’re never out of touch with your team when you need them.

COMING SOON: Since Podio became part of Citrix, we’ve been working hard to bring the world-class Citrix audio and video technology into Podio. We are happy to report that we will launch ad hoc video conferencing this summer, meaning you can launch face-to-face meetings from right inside Podio. It will be the perfect way to brainstorm ideas, perfect details and make decisions with colleagues that aren’t sharing the same office. Find out more at company.podio.com/chat and get the full product update on the Podio blog.

We’re giving away an iPad Mini with a year’s subscription of GoToMeeting so you can harness the power of online meetings wherever you choose work.

To enter*, just follow @GoToMeetingUK and tweet this message.

Win an iPad Mini with GoToMeeting! To enter, RT and follow @GoToMeetingUK http://bit.ly/17xqwUf #GoToMini

Competition bonus!

For the duration of the competition, we’ve made it even easier to try GoToMeeting.

Sign up for our exclusive free trial of GoToMeeting and enter promo code GoToMini. No credit card details required.   

The competition ends on Tuesday, May 10. Good luck! 

*This competition is for UK residents only. For full details, read the competition terms and conditions.

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Email marketing to a house list, search engine optimization (SEO) and social media (not ads) are the most popular lead generation channels with business-to-business marketers, according to research firm Software Advice. 

I recently released the results of the 2012 B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey. The report shows marketers increasingly prefer digitally focused channels.

About 98 percent of the sample uses email marketing to a house list, for example, versus just 50 percent using radio, television and print advertising. SEO was the second most popular with about 94 percent of the sample using this channel, followed by social media (not ads) with about 88 percent of the group. Trade shows were the exception to the digital trend, with about 87 percent of the sample using this lead conduit.

The digital focus was also apparent when marketers were asked about the success of each channel, as far as producing quality and quantities of leads.

Both search engine advertising and in-house email marketing ranked in the top three for quantity of leads, with 73 percent calling these channels medium to high quantity. These channels utilize inbound marketing tactics that draw prospects to you with content and optimized web search. These methods allow you to specify the kind of traffic you drive to your site and therefore only attract those leads most likely to buy from you. These tactics also allow more focused results tracking, so marketers can consistently tweak their content audience, optimization tactics and paid search.

For similar reasons, in-house email marketing also topped the list for quality with about 89 percent of respondents agreeing that leads from this channel are medium to high quality. Prospects that convert through this method have already raised their hand once and expressed interest in your company by subscribing to your email list, so they are more likely to come back and buy from you.

SEO came in second for quality, with about 84 percent describing prospects from this channel as medium to high quality. Again, this ranking is possible because of the ability to target only the most relevant potential buyers.

At Software Advice, for example, we focus our optimization around keywords that show high intent to buy software. We target phrases such as “CRM software comparison” more so than “what is CRM software?” because the latter search indicates someone still early on in the research process. In this way, we see the greatest return from SEO because we can choose keywords where the buying intent is clear. Even if the total search traffic might be high for “CRM software,” a large percent of people searching that phrase likely aren’t in the market to buy.

Quality and quantity were not the only drivers, however, of channel popularity. Cost per lead was also important, the survey showed. Social media, for example, was listed as the lowest cost channel and among the most popular. But the medium did not score high for quality or quantity of leads.

This may have a lot to do with hype, but it may also be that social media isn’t just used for lead generation. Many marketers use social media for relationship building and pre-funnel networking.

This could be one reason Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media efforts will be a top spending priority this year. About 55 percent of the sample said they will spend more on social media (not ads) next year, while about 53 percent will spend more on social media ads and 52 percent will increase their search engine advertising budget.

About the research

The survey was conducted over about four weeks in October and November 2012. Researchers received 155 responses from mostly C-level marketers in smaller organizations. See the study results and a breakdown of the sample by business size, marketing budget and seniority.

Take a minute to look around your office. How many computers are on? How many lights? Do you think the copy machine has ever been unplugged? What temperature would you guess is on the thermostat?

According to the Energy Information Administration, offices consume more energy than any other type of building, and the U.S. Department of Energy expects this consumption to increase in the coming years.

When we try to think of ways to shrink our carbon footprints, we usually think of how we get to work, not how work gets to the environment.  But even if you carpooled or rode your bike to cut your CO2 emissions, your office would continue to be a huge energy guzzler. Still, you have to go to work, right?

Wrong!

Work is not a place. It’s a thing you do. So why not do the thing you do wherever you want? How about a place where you can control the thermostat and install energy efficient light bulbs like, say, your own home?

As mentioned in a previous workshifting.com post, if everyone worked from home just half of the time, each year we could each save hundreds of dollars at the pump, collectively cut spending on foreign oil by $23 billion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 53 million metric tons. And that’s just the “get to work” part of the equation.

If employees worked from home – even just a few days each month – office buildings could give the environment some deserved vacation days, turning off the air conditioning or heating, reducing electricity usage and curtailing the financial and environmental costs of running the office at full power.

What about the energy used by the workshifters at home, you say? True, they have to have lights, heat and computers, too. But they don’t have vast empty conference rooms to heat or cool, copy machines on all day or industrial strength lighting.

All in all, I think a home office is pretty Earth friendly compared to an office building. What do you think?

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It may not come as a surprise that a new survey conducted by our company, Quantum Leap Marketing, Inc. (QLM), revealed that online events are now the default choice for marketing, training and internal communication events for small and medium-sized organizations. After all, in any economy, smaller companies are looking for ways to do more with less.

The survey results revealed that in-person seminars and trade shows cost 4 times more than marketing webinars do; likewise, in-person training costs 7 times more than online training does. In addition, 92 percent of organizations that participated in the survey plan to hold an online event in 2013, and 20 percent plan on adding marketing webinars to their repertoire.

Here’s another reason for online events moving up into the default choice: the use and adoption of video is on the rise in the business world. Over 75 percent of webinar producers are considering or planning on using video in their online events this year. And here’s why:

1. The majority of learning happens visually – some estimate that as much as 80 percent of learning is visual – so the increased adoption of video in online events means better education and information retention.
2. In online events, most presenters and attendees prefer face-to-face interaction, and online video offers that.
3. The availability and use of consumer video conferencing has lead to increased usage in business-use cases, too.
4. Video offers a more personal and engaging online environment, helping event coordinators effectively reach a wider market than they could in person.

All these factors suggest that we can expect video adoption to continue driving more online events and pushing the ROI of those events even higher when we survey webinar producers again next year.

Download The ROI of Online Events for 2013 eBook.