Meaning of “client collaboration”: Client Collaboration is a term used for a new software approach that allow organizations to share knowledge, content and documents with their clients, partners, suppliers and outsourcing vendors. It is an initiative to facilitate collaborations among all the participants in the value chain. Some companies are still skeptical about shared data for risk mitigation or security reasons.
Secure collaboration tools can satisfy compliance requirements by securely sharing information between an organization and its partners, vendors, subcontractors and suppliers. The vendors claim collaboration software saves money by eliminating redundancy and rework.
Cisco WebEx
According to Cisco, 37% of employee time is spent in meetings.
While most meetings are a drag and a waste of time, we can’t deny what perpetual necessity meetings are for team collaboration. It is for this reason, Cisco WebEx, one of the most powerful meetings management software is included in this list.
Use Cisco WebEx to streamline an over-bearing bundle of meetings with the following perks:
- Share screens, host webinars and video conferences with WebEx Floating panels
- Schedule meetings using Quick or Advanced Scheduler. Users can send meeting invites via SMS, email or IM.
- In case of a dead battery or technical constraints, WebEx facilitates the immediate device switch option in connection with the meeting remains intact.
- Record meetings to revisit old discussions from the past
- Monitor meeting safety by setting a password to each meeting
- Use Brainstorm tool to gather real-time votes from team attendees
Pricing
- Premium – $24/month. 8 members. Video conferencing and screen sharing.
Xender
Xender is another file-sharing app, that surfaced on the market 7 years ago. Since then Xender has acquired more than 700 million users worldwide.
Using one of the most innovative technologies and a high-performance global server network, Xender proudly proclaims and also delivers the fastest file transfer from one device to another.
See how Xender makes file sharing a breeze:
- Xender app uses a technology called Wi-Fi Direct. Wi-fi Direct technology enables users with Wi-Fi-connection to share files and across any device. Users can connect to more than one person at a time and share files with a number of people at the same time.
- Xender has a dedicated history folder that shows users a list of all their files and videos shared across a given period of time. A separate folder for Sent and Received files
- Offers a Swipe & Share feature, for which users simply have to shake their device to transfer a file
- A very straightforward interface designed to make every beginner feel right at home
Pricing
- Free to use on PC, Android, and iOS
Google Drive
Possibly one of the most popular names in cloud storage and file sharing, Google drive gives us all the right reasons to include it in our list of team collaboration tools. With more than 800 million users to bag, Google Drive is giving all other cloud storage applications a run for their money.
A safe, fast, and reliable space for all your files, you don’t have to think twice before choosing Google Drive for your team collaboration. Quickly invite anyone to view and download the files to participate in useful team discussions and take timely decisions.
Not only file storage, but the tool also comes with powerful native applications to help you smartly deal with your daily operations.
This is what you can conveniently achieve by using Google Drive:
- Create documents (spreadsheets and slides etc) and share with relevant team members
- Run a quick team survey using Google docs
- Layout diagrams and flow charts using Google Drawings
- Scan documents and save their copy as PDFs
- With your Google account, you get free 15 GB of storage space
Pricing
- Up to 15 GB – Free
- 100 GB – $1.99
- 1 TB – $9.99
- 10 TB – $99.99
Harvest
Harvest is a web-based tool, prospering 12 years in the business of helping a busy chunk of teams to track time and meet their goals on time. It takes full responsibility for your time tracking needs, with smart and intelligent features that extend from reporting to planning and assessing the health of your project.
Harvest is popular for:
- Manual time tracking options. You can either use Harvest’s digital timer to log in total hours spent on a task or create timesheets from scratch.
- Calculating Burnout capacities. Harvest tracks and records the total hours inserted for each employee and compares the total billable hours logged in from each member. From this comparison, it determines whether an employee is overburdened. And if it is the time bar turns red.
- Integrate able with a sister-app, called Forecast. Forecast creates a roadmap of all the projects and gives a quick summary of what each team member is working on and which tasks are pending.
- Excellent reporting system. Each time a team member submits a report of his/her timesheet, an automatic notification is sent to the project manager for review. On the other end, project managers can send a polite reminder in case someone has forgotten to send in their reports.
- Convert billable hours into invoices with simple single clicks. Then share these invoices with clients and customers via email. And if a client is slacking off or has forgotten to pay your invoice, Harvest sends automatic reminders to them.
Pricing
- Single User – $12/month Unlimited estimates and invoices
Hubstaff
Another leader in time tracking tools. Hubstaff is a lightweight platform designed specifically for remote teams. More than 8000 remote companies now use Hubstaff for managing deadlines and keep track of multiple teams.
Hubstaff time tracking functionalities ensure accurate time accountability of each employee. The application also comes with a thorough reporting system that provides actionable insights for efficient decision making.
However, Hubstaff is not simply a time tracking tool. It offers a variety of features such as screen recording, automatic payrolls, GPS tracking, and powerful APIs, to make team collaboration faster and more authentic.
See what your team can do using Hubstaff:
- Dashboards that display all your team’s performance, each activity, the total budget spent on each project, and the total number of projects completed.
- An automatic report generating a system that detects when a timesheet has been completed and is now ready for review
- With Hubstaff’s advanced monitoring feature, project managers can monitor how much time does each team member spend on a website.
- Team leads can monitor and keep track of each team member’s attendance with Staff Scheduling.
Pricing
- Free Plan – Single User. Limited Features.
- Basic Plan – $208/month. 50 users. Limited features
- Collaborate with your team and avoid missing deadlinesTeam chat, resource management, file sharing and many more! Absolutely free.
- Get Started for Free
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger is a Slack alternative Workplace collaboration app. The impressive UI and immersive UX make the users smoothly transit between the features to achieve greater team conversations.
Designed for all team sizes! The teams of agile or non-agile can seamlessly connect across groups and discuss work. It comes in the variants of SaaS, Self-hosting, Chat APIs, and Custom app. The best email killer allows users to send/receive messages, attachments of all file types in just a few seconds.
Look how Troop Messenger stands unique in delivering the best team collaboration:
- Send instant one-to-one messages to an individual or to a group member. Each message is supported with actions of reply, copy, forward, recall, edit, delete, respond later, flag, and message info.
- Easily filter out unread messages with its filter.
- Change the background area of the chat with beautiful wallpapers and feel the new chat experience.
- Share your screen with the remote team members across all cross-platforms.
- Use advanced filter group to view documents, images, videos, URLs, and more for effective data segregation.
- Ability to preview all types of documents without downloading them.
- Send a quick audio message to your team member or group for better workplace communication.
- Supports many native integrations to enhance work productivity.
Pricing
- Premium: $1 per user/month. All basic team collaboration features with 150GB/account.
- Enterprise: $5 per user/month. New registrations can avail a one-month free trial of this plan with an exclusive set of features including premium.
- Self-Hosting: Custom. This model is suitable for 500+ users designed to serve large corporations.
Time Doctor
As many as 24% of employees admit that they spend at least an hour a day checking their personal emails, phone calls, and text messages. This can be avoided by using Time Doctor. Time Doctor is a time tracking software that is used to accurately monitor the time spent during a workday
It records the time spent on various activities by an average employee and provides analytics that helps in analyzing the total time management at work.
The time Doctor provides screenshots for tracking the activities. These screenshots can be taken at any time interval you specify during the working hours, ensuring minimum privacy intrusion and maximum team collaboration.
This is how Time Doctor is a solution for your time management needs:
- Efficient time tracking which records all the time being spent on an individual activity
- Accurate data that shows internet usage during working hours. How much time is being spent on each application is also recorded
- Payroll management alongside hours worked conveniently calculated through Time Doctor
- Integrations with other tools like Slack, Google Apps, Jira, Asana, Freshdesk, etc.
- Clients that you’ve worked for can view the data related to their work only to check the progress
Pricing
- $9.99 per user/month, Free for the first 14 days
Conclusion
To collaborate means to work together. One could easily say that this is something we do everyday; even in our personal, everyday lives. If you go to the grocery store with your friends to pick up groceries for dinner, you are likely collaborating on what you should make for dinner. Today I’m going to talk about business collaboration tools , which are designed to help individuals that work together; or want to work together; to do so more efficiently.