For B2B collaborations, establishing a shared workspace on neutral territory, administered by a third party, can help put collaborators on equal footing and allay concerns about who controls shared data. Groove Networks' peer-to-peer collaboration software and the hosted version of EMC/Documentum's eRoom service avoid the problems that arise when a single company owns the collaborative space. "It creates much more of a peer relationship," says David Marshak, senior vice president at Patricia Seybold Group. "When one company owns it, the other company is subservient."

Web portals can also be a powerful tool for enabling collaboration. P&G developed an internal Web site known as InnovationNet in 1997 to encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration among the company's widely dispersed researchers. But since CEO Lafley's push to expand external collaboration began in 2002, Michael Telljohann, P&G's associate director of corporate IT, has been broadening the site to give P&G researchers access to would-be collaborators on the outside. Researchers who want help tackling thorny scientific problems can now use InnovationNet to post queries to external networks of scientists, such as Innocentive, a network of chemists assembled by pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly, or Nine Sigma, a similar network of research labs. Telljohann's group developed custom workflows to walk researchers through the process of refining and posting queries; vetted responses are delivered online or via e-mail. InnovationNet has made it easy for P&G researchers to hook up with such unlikely collaborators as a patent attorney in North Carolina, a graduate student in Spain and a chemist in Bangalore.

MINIMIZE NEED FOR INTEGRATION: System-to-system integration using EDI or Rosettanet can be time-consuming and costly. "It looks very easy on paper, but is tougher when you get down at the data-element level and have to match it all up," says Mike MacKenty, vice president of IT and supply chain services at Nypro, a precision moulding and contract manufacturing company that collaborates with global mobile phone, automotive and PC manufacturers. Although he's done integration with EDI countless times, MacKenty says there are no best practices for making it easier. "At the end of the day, it's work every time," he says.

But on occasion, it's possible to use less complex methods to share data than full-blown systems integration. MacKenty sets up extranet sites to post operational data for partners. "The investment required to make it happen is not that much, it's more on the process side," he says. "But the payoff can be tremendous if you both work off the same formats, the same information."

It's also possible to avoid integrating systems by using the shared workspace. BAE Systems, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Rolls-Royce all banded together to create a common workspace for collaboration with suppliers and business partners. Called ForumPass, this pay-as-you-go shared working environment is secure and offers such collaborative functionality as integrated online meetings and workflow. Collaborators don't need to deal with the hassles of integrating systems or invest in a specific technology as a precondition of working with business partners; they just need Web access and money to pay for the service. If a collaboration proposal or project bid doesn't go forward, the companies haven't spent a fortune on infrastructure that won't get used. And because it's hosted by Exostar, an independent, third-party provider, no single collaborator is seen to "own" the workspace or the data therein, establishing a more level playing field.

ForumPass is yielding impressive reductions in cycle time for BAE. In the past, if BAE wanted to alter, say, the layout of a control panel on an aircraft or ship, it took up to three months to calculate the final cost and time impact of the proposed engineering change. BAE would have to consult its tier-one suppliers who, in turn, would consult with tier-two suppliers, who would work out a rough order of magnitude price and send it back up the chain of command. Then the process would repeat to arrive at a final figure. Now, change requests can be posted to all supply chain partners simultaneously in ForumPass, and they can see one another's comments and thus understand clearly the issues at stake; comments are reconciled at online meetings conducted through WebEx. Because users are able to control access to any information they put into the shared workspace, suppliers can save time by using ForumPass to reach agreement internally on a price before releasing it to their collaborators. Now, Nibbelke says, it's possible for BAE to nail down final costs within 10 days - roughly one tenth of the time it used to take.

CONFRONT SECURITY ISSUES HEAD-ON: The growing emphasis on security further complicates the already complex task of integration. Although security issues have put the kibosh on some collaborative projects at Visa, Thompson's team was able to successfully collaborate with business partners to develop Visa's online dispute resolution system, Visa Resolve Online. The system allows cardholders who don't recognize a charge on their statement to call the banks that issue their cards and get immediate explanations. The security challenge was enormous because the system sits behind the firewalls of financial institutions that offer Visa cards, yet accesses transaction data that resides within Visa's systems. Although business and IT execs at the banks and at Visa were eager to make it happen, security experts on both sides were initially concerned that this type of system could open a crack in security. To work out the challenges, Visa assembled a working group of IT and security experts from Visa and 15 or so member financial institutions. "They had to work it through and iterate it until they found a method that both sides could live with," says Thompson.

Visa then published a document outlining the security approach, giving other member banks a chance to weigh in if they didn't think it would work for them. The fact that Visa Resolve Online is in use in the market today is proof that even the gnarliest of security issues can be tackled, given enough patience, a direct get-them-in-the-room approach and a strong belief that the effort will pay off.

If companies don't have the resources to solve security issues themselves, a third-party hosted solution might be the answer. BAE and other users of ForumPass rely on Exostar's access control and built-in encryption to address the problem of distributing the varying levels of "need to know" information among supply chain partners. Users are guaranteed that no unauthorized person can look at information they submit to ForumPass because it's encrypted as soon as it leaves their desktop and is stored in the database in encrypted form.

Collaboration isn't an easy destination to reach. But while the journey might be arduous, the payoff once you arrive can be well worth the effort.