Nowadays, working from home has become a new work style for every company. That’s why collaboration tools play an important role in bringing your employees together for the success of any company. It can strategically transform your workforce.
Collaboration in the workplace is critical to success in the business world. It’s more like the ‘new normal’ that exists in most startups around the world, especially for tech startups.
If you run a company, you’ll agree with the fact that you can expect better results when diverse team members work more closely with each other than cut to each other.
However, you can only ensure higher efficiency and increased productivity in the workplace if you have the best collaboration tools.
Therefore, you need to know how to effectively choose a work collaboration tool for your team. Here are the 5 best tips to choose a work collaboration tool.
Why Use a Work Collaboration Tool?
The role of collaboration tools becomes even more important when teams are dispersed, and team members are not working in the same place at the same time.
Collaboration tools help your business to add more value to their work and save time. Whether it’s about meeting deadlines, managing multiple tasks at once, or offering support to colleagues, collaboration tools are a must for your company to reach new heights.
5 Tips to Effectively Choose a Work Collaboration Tool
1. Assess Your Needs
One of the most important criteria to choose a collaboration tool is how effectively it can meet your needs and align with your organization’s goals. This will help your business to choose the right collaboration work which may affect the business success.
You can start by analyzing your business needs and identifying gaps that need to be addressed. Once you have a comprehensive list of what you really want to accomplish with the team collaboration tool, start researching and comparing products against that list of needs. This gives you a clear picture of what your team needs and helps narrow your search.
2. Choose User-Friendly System
When you choose a work collaboration tool, you need to choose a tool with the basic features that your employees need and a user-friendly system. Additionally, ensure that the system must also be responsive and strong to increase employee productivity.
That’s why try to find tools with a free trial to assess if the system has the key features that you need or you may also find field service software to help you choose the right tool with good usability and simplicity. This is to avoid complicated procedures and unresponsive systems which can burden users and reduce productivity.
3. Check Your Data Security
The third tip is to make sure the tools you are going to use protect your organization’s data properly. You can ensure the security of your data with SSL encryption which allows you to track and manage how internal tools access your data.
The software must have user controls and rights for different users to ensure data integrity. Especially when it comes to cloud-based software, you need to make sure your workplace tools are trustworthy and offer unbreakable security.
This can prevent data loss or even cybercrime. So, choosing a collaboration tool with a safeguard will help your company to protect important data and other security in the future.
4. Keep Your Budget in Mind
The next tip is to consider the budget you will use to invest in work collaboration tools. You will also need to consider other costs that come with the system such as maintenance fees, software upgrades, and subscription fees.
In determining the budget that will be spent on this work collaboration tool, you can adjust it to the needs of your organization, the long-term benefits that will be obtained from the collaboration system before making a purchase.
Thus, you can consider the cost you will spend with the benefits and uses of the work collaboration tool that you are going to use. This can help you choose work collaboration tools effectively and appropriately.
5. Involve User Opinion In Evaluation
Lastly, you can involve users in selecting tools with the aim of getting support from these people to close loopholes for complaints that arise in the future. This method may require more effort but will be beneficial and effective in the long run.
Thus, you can be assured of a faster onboarding process with fewer incidents and minimal room for costly rejections. You can use a survey to engage with people easily and effectively. People often use standard questionnaires and share them to get feedback on a number of specific tools.
What Types of Collaboration Tool for Your Team?
1. Video-Conferencing
This video conferencing tool is a method of visual communication via video that can be done from one-on-one chats to conferences with many people in various locations.
This type of tool allows you to get meetings and seminars from anywhere. Many companies use this method to replace in-person meetings with video conferencing so that teams can still get the “feeling” of meeting each other as they communicate.
For example, your company conducts training online for their employees using video conferencing tools which enable your company to present explainer videos, share screen files, and PowerPoint for presentations.
2. Instant Message
An instant messaging tool is a type of collaboration tool that allows you to exchange text messages and files online in real-time via a computer.
Apart from that, it also allows you to define different channels for different teams. The dialogues are interactive and most applications allow video file exchange, voice communication, and video conferencing.
3. Calendar Sharing Tools
The next type of tool is a shared calendar that helps you schedule meetings, tasks, and deadlines at work. This proved to be effective for businesses to conduct any kind of business activity.
The organizers can start with finding the right time interval, checking the availability of other participants, meeting rooms, and sending invitations. This tool saves a lot of time to facilitate teamwork and help your business activity to be more organized.
There are several common software that you can use for calendar sharing such as Google Calendar, Google Workspace, and others.
4. Specialised workforce management tools
As you get bigger and the complexities of your business expand, it’s time to look at more specialised workforce management tools. These can include everything from adding and assigning your jobs, raising invoices, saving notes and running reports. The newer generation of networked tools also allow you to connect to your customers and subcontractors and manage both internally and internal.
A little plug – Okappy is a connected workforce management platform!
Takeaway
Collaboration tools can keep good communication within your company. Whether you work offline or online, you can still have a perfect collaboration using collaboration tools. They also help your business activities work effectively and keep your business productive.
Now you can effectively choose the right collaboration tools for your business needs with the tips above. So, start to find your workforce management platform to help your business to manage day-to-day jobs, reduce paperwork, increase efficiency, and so on.
Author bio
Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).
Twitter: @breadnbeyond
Email: andre@breadnbeyond.com
LinkedIn: Andre Oentoro
