eRoom Technology

Kelly Murray/Jerry Griffin PAN Communications, Inc. (978) 474-1900 eroom@pancomm.com	Pam Sullivan eRoom Technology, Inc. (617) 497-6300 psullivan@eroom.com
Rudy Ruggles Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation (617) 761-4024 rudy.ruggles@us.cgeyc.com

INDUSTRY LUMINARIES EXAMINE EVOLUTION OF
THE eWORKPLACE; PROVIDE VISION OF THE FUTURE

eRoom Technology and CGE&Y Center for Business Innovation's Envisioning the eWorkplace Concludes with Predictions for Next Decade

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., - January 30, 2001 - Offering visions of a world ruled by such concepts as "face-to-face" stocks, spontaneous brain raves and the "shut-up revolution," a gathering of some of the industry's premier thought leaders peered 10 years into the future and issued a missive to the next generation of virtual workers as the two-day Envisioning the eWorkplace event came to a close last week.

The day-long, invitation-only series of brainstorming sessions at the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (CGE&Y) Center for Business Innovation was highlighted by an exchange of recommendations of what needs to take place if the virtual workplace is to evolve over the next decade. The directives ranged from societal issues such as a radical restructuring of secondary education, new forms of representation in government and revamped compensation models, to technological needs such as virtual collaboration. The discussion also touched on human elements calling for a greater balance in ego and the proper amount of walks in the park.

Prior to making their recommendations, the group was asked to provide a lighthearted glimpse of the future through the eyes of the media in 2010, which led to stories on everything from companies that profited from promoting face-to-face communication to a revolution founded on the need to protect one's privacy. Some ideas sought to change the status quo. One fictional Time magazine headline read: "Starbucks Sells Their Last Cup of Coffee…No Longer Key to Their Business; Begins Offering Office Space, Laptops, Cell Phones."

The event, which was co-sponsored by the CGE&Y Center for Business Innovation and eRoom Technology, concluded with a "final rant" during which five speakers in Cambridge addressed the online audience at the simultaneous virtual conference that was taking place on www.futureworkplace.net. The speeches painted a picture of a virtual work environment as a new ecosystem for progress that, despite its obvious room for pitfalls, will transform the workplace into a place that adds value to an individual's life rather than takes time from it.

"This was the embodiment of the type of exchanges that will drive a future governed by a virtual workplace," Francois Gossieaux, vice president and chief marketing officer for eRoom Technology, said. "It is our hope that the ideas generated over the two days can serve as a rough blueprint for the next decade and bridge some of the gaps as the workplace becomes even more distributed."

Throughout the day, the consensus among the 50 authors, analysts, business leaders, and media gathered at the Center was that, regardless of the form the virtual workplace takes, it will require flexibility from its workforce.

"People who need to have a clear road map ahead and who love the idea that you graduate from college and then there's a career path … those people should be very frightened," Jerry Michalski, founder of Sociate and former editor-in-chief of Release 1.0, said. "Nothing's really going to be as clear as that. They're going to have to make a lot of choices that confuse them. But if they can live with paradox and live with complexity, they'll be very happy."

As events at the Center unfolded, the successful online conference continued with a series of presentations focused on how leading companies are changing the way business is done through collaborative virtual workplaces. Highlights included:

Richard C. Ferguson, managing director, EDS E.solutions Project Management Consulting Practice talked about the nature of virtual teams needing to be focused on time, scope, human resources, and communication. In a live audience poll, 69 percent agreed that communication was most important to project management success.
Kim Rideout, director of Business Development for Professional Services Automation, Peoplesoft, described the changing work environment within professional services organizations, pointing out that consultants are making great strides in the development of best practices by capturing the data in one repository, the virtual workplace. In addition, training and knowledge sharing among consultants, who may never meet face-to-face, can be shared through online training in virtual workplaces.
Paul McKeon, chief business officer, Ketchum, explained how the firm is attempting to transform public relations by creating a "digital dashboard" for its professionals consisting of elements of personalization, collaboration, and knowledge management.
Bipin Patel, director, Management Systems at Ford Motor Company, detailed Ford's unique efforts to grow human capital, which include "e-Surveys" designed to get a pulse of the employees and a 90-day eLearning pilot that consists of 1,056 courses taken and 1,100 pages of e-books read to date.
Ian Swanson, vice president of Global Knowledge & eImplementation at The Seagram Spirits & Wine Group, illustrated how collaborative technology is helping the company focus less on its business-to-business strategy and more on a business-to-employee model. Swanson was joined by Bob Parisi, managing consultant for Managed Application Hosting Services, USinternetworking, who described the impact of application service providers, predicting that Microsoft would be sold as a service rather than a boxed product within 10 years.

Transcripts of the entire Envisioning the eWorkplace event will be archived and available at www.futureworkplace.net.

About The Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center For Business Innovation
The Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation is a research and development organization focused on emerging management trends, problems, and solutions. The Center's mission is to shape the evolution of business by creating new service offerings and businesses, providing value for clients, and communicating to broad audiences, differentiating Cap Gemini Ernst & Young as a leader in business innovation. Through a shared conversation among a community of today's leading business thinkers, academic pioneers and industry innovators, the Center is able to bring leading-edge ideas to fruition. For more information about the Center for Business Innovation please contact Susan Gryson at (617) 761-4023 or email susan.gryson@ey.com.

About eRoom Technology
eRoom Technology is a leading provider of Internet-based software and services for collaboration among an organization's extended enterprise of employees, customers, suppliers, and other partners. The company's eRoom product provides a digital workplace for electronic business, allowing organizations to quickly assemble a project team wherever people are located and manage the collaborative activities that support their complex and rapidly-changing business projects and processes. Customers use eRoom digital workplaces to help get products to market faster, drive down production costs, enhance customer relationships, and improve the work products that drive their businesses. The eRoom solution is used by more than 475 companies such as A.T. Kearney, Bausch & Lomb, Compaq, Deloitte Consulting, EDS, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett-Packard, Ketchum, KPMG, Pfizer, Siemens, Solectron, Towers Perrin, and Verizon. More information about eRoom Technology and its product offerings can be found at www.eroom.com.