How can online collaboration tools lead to productive teamwork? Everything you produce has probably gone through some form of teamwork. As a matter of fact, many products are the result of the work of many people. This is evident by sports cars, cell phones, clothing or other physical media. These come about when people learn to work together to achieve something they could not do alone. Many factors go into making a product, and this assignment will break down just how many roles there are in the production of one simple thing. This could be an item that can be purchased at any store or something that you might not be able to buy in
Online collaboration tools allow employees to work from anywhere, at any time. A number of businesses have implemented online collaboration tools with great success. They have improved communication among employees, increased creativity and improved the bottom line. Online collaboration can lead to productive teamwork if a company follows a few basic guidelines. Learn more here.
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How Can Online Collaboration Tools Lead to Productive Teamwork
Maximize creative efforts
Expand creative output and promote overall team input with the ability to share files. Online collaboration tools give team members the capability of sharing unique, digital files by reviewing a document together or sharing an online workspace. Use these resources to give your teams a chance to build off each other’s creativity. This type of climate not only pushes the limits of an organization’s creativity but enhances productivity and efficiency as well.
When a team is given opportunities to create in settings conducive to creativity, the resulting projects reflect it. It’s not enough to share feedback and ideas through email or other limited settings. Instead, teams need to be connected in real time to effectively boost each other’s potential for creative output.
Online collaboration tools such as Dropbox offer sharing and scheduling features. Dropbox is one of the most popular online collaboration tools due to the fact it meets a lot of the storage needs of modern organizations. Exploit the powerful collaboration possibilities that tools like Dropbox offers to empower teams and bolster creativity and performance.
How Collaboration Improves Productivity
The use of collaboration technologies helps organizations of any size improve productivity. For example, the ICP survey found companies that used Slack reported an average 49% reduction in email volumes, a 25% drop in the number of meetings and a 32% increase in productivity.ALSO READ: Office Collaboration Tools
A Dimensional Research survey sponsored by Cisco found 53% of organizations indicated that the use of smart meeting rooms has helped improve business processes and 54% of business leaders plan to invest more in user-friendly collaborative solutions.
So in what specific areas can collaboration improve productivity?
- Break down silos by allowing team members to communicate with each other across departments. This minimizes friction and delays in business processes while helping to build a customer-centric organization, so employees can focus their time and efforts on what matters.
- Improve the customer experience by connecting customers with the right team member to reduce the time and resources required for customer care so fewer employees can service more customers without compromising quality.
- Improve external collaboration and communications to enhance vendor/supplier relationships and lower friction in the procurement process, thereby reducing cost while increasing cost-efficiency.
- Enable real-time information exchange (e.g., data syncing, file sharing) to facilitate business processes while minimizing delays and errors that lower productivity and impact customer experience.
- Streamline workflows by improving communication among departments (e.g., manufacturing, sales, marketing, procurement, IT) to create a nimble organization that can respond to market demand cost-efficiently.
- Facilitate project management by increasing transparency and visibility, maintain an open line of communication, and make sure that everything is on track to avoid costly mistakes and confusion.
- Share information on policy, programs, promotions, scheduling, budgets, etc. to minimize the time employees spend on administrative tasks.
- Enable knowledge workers to gain real-time access to and locate data quickly and accurately with a content management system.
- Facilitate the execution of projects and initiatives by making sure information can be shared quickly and concisely. It helps improve time-to-market, increase agility and optimize the utilization of distributed resources.
- Promote team problem-solving, especially for remote workers, by allowing employees to meet, discuss and make decisions with agility and accuracy.
- Eliminate version-control issues, which can lead to delays, errors and inefficiencies, with real-time file sharing so team members don’t have to pass along documents using emails.
- Encourage innovation by reducing the cycle time from ideation to implementation. Enable employees to iterate ideas quickly by tapping into talents throughout the organization.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Collaboration
Productivity
Pros: Online collaboration gives team members the tools they need to work with others from any location, including from home and while travelling. This drastically reduces ”downtime” and allows people to be productive when it best suits them. Platforms like Kahootz also send team members automatic updates when documents have been added or amended, ensuring everyone is kept in the loop and projects keep moving at a fast pace.ALSO READ: Collaboration Apps Free
A research study by Deloitte found that three-quarters of those surveyed believed access to collaboration tools would improve productivity and can significantly improve productivity levels by as much as 20-25%.
Cons: Personal contact is reduced, which can lead to confusion over what is expected of team members. They may also feel that being connected 24/7 is blurring the boundaries between their professional and private lives. Online collaboration also requires each team member to be responsible for their own tasks and keep each other accountable, to ensure deadlines are met.
Solution: Make sure team members are clear about their roles and responsibilities, and put effective managers in charge of workspaces. Use task lists and team diaries to assign work and check progress, and set ground rules about when colleagues are expected to be online – and when they are not. Finally, don’t abandon face-to-face meetings – they can still be very useful, if not as essential as before!
Cost
Pros: Online collaboration is highly cost-effective compared to traditional methods, and is within reach of all sizes of organisation. Software like Kahootz offers flexible pay-as-you-go licensing, ensuring you only pay for the exact amount of users you need and not tied down to large bundles of licences. Also, because collaborating online allows employees to work from home or other locations, you can potentially cut the cost of office overheads such as equipment, electricity and space.
Cons: You need to choose an online collaboration package offering a fair pricing structure. Some will force you to buy licences for users you don’t need, so be wary. On the other hand, a “per user per month” pricing model may lead organisations to limit the access to only selected users. This, in turn, can cause a disparity in transparency and communication across the workplace.
Solution: Shop around for the best deals and work out projected costs before signing up for any cloud collaboration package. Some vendors will provide a calculator on their website to help you do this.
Security
Pros: The most trusted online collaboration platforms have many safeguards in place to protect their users’ data. By having encryptions, password protection, two-step authentication and firewalls; users can have the peace of mind knowing their sensitive data is secure and safe. ALSO READ: Free Online Collaboration Tools For Business
Cons: As online collaboration typically functions on a cloud-based workspace, securing the safety of information is vital on all levels. Although the original concerns associated with these tools have been resolved, there are still a few people with the mind-set that storing data in the cloud is not as secure as keeping it on their personal servers.
Solution: Any online collaboration software vendor should be able to provide evidence of their security credentials if asked.
Looking at their list of clients also provides insight. If security-conscious organisations, (from the public or defence sectors for example) trust them to host their data, then that can only be a good sign.
Finding the Right Collaboration Solutions
When selecting collaboration tools for your business to improve productivity, you should also consider the following:
- Business requirements: Use a platform that can solve your specific challenges, work for both internal teams and external partners, and can meet the company’s short-term and long-term objectives.
- Features: Gather requirements from employees to ensure that you’re choosing collaborative tools that can facilitate processes, streamline workflows and improve user performance. Your collaboration tools should not create more work for your employees!
- Cost: Consider the ROI and ongoing IT expenses associated with upgrades and maintenance so you can ensure cost-efficiency and high productivity in the long run.
- Support: A reliable vendor should provide top-notch technical support to help you maximize productivity by making sure the software is running optimally and resolving issues promptly.
Ultimately, an effective collaboration platform should ensure that the right people are getting the right information at the right time to streamline processes, eliminate bottlenecks, minimize delays and reduce errors in the most cost-efficient way possible.
Conclusion
Online collaboration tools have lowered the cost of contact amongst small groups, increasing the global participation in projects. For business executives, product managers, or project leaders this means increased ability to quickly gain support for new product launches, keep stakeholders informed about new products or development schedules, and form cross-functional teams across borders.