Implementing a Portfolio of Collaboration Technologies in Statoil

The focus of this chapter is the implementation of collaboration technologies in Statoil, a Norwegian oil company. Over a period of ten years, this company has gradually developed an infrastructure of collaboration technologies for supporting its work processes. This includes document management and workflow, intranet, electronic meeting support systems and videoconferencing. The case study uncovers the many challenges in the adoption of these technologies, and the continuing work of developing effective work practices related to the technology. Changing the work habits towards more collaborative behaviour has proved difficult, and IT tools supporting individual production are still more popular and widespread in use than collaboration tools such as shared databases. Further, limited coordination among the various internal groups supporting the different technologies has also acted as a barrier in this process. To improve this situation, Statoil launched a major project for integrating the further activity related to their portfolio of collaboration technologies. The main elements in this strategy are presented, together with further challenges related to the implementation of the strategy.