The Collaborative Tools for Business (CTB) consists of five pieces of software that make it easy to plan projects, schedule tasks, assign work, share files, and communicate online. Managers can use the CTB to control their team’s workloads and accounts. Members can use the CTB to keep track of their assignments, download material for projects, and communicate with teammates.
Collaborative Tools for Business enables companies to engage users, customers and partners with web-based real-time collaboration. With a flexible approach, Collaborative Tools helps businesses of all sizes create a unified cross platform environment. Collaborative Tools for Business’ patent pending technology allows businesses to create a virtual meeting place on their website allowing users to interact without downloading or installing any software.
Slack
A collaboration tool which needs no introduction
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REASONS TO BUY
+Excellent interface+Impressive free version
REASONS TO AVOID
-Some might want more depth in security
Slack is without doubt a mighty collaboration tool, with millions of users around the globe. It’s an incredibly smart platform, and you can get it on mobile and desktop devices. It allows for the sending of direct messages (DMs) and files to a single person or a group of employees, and there’s the ability to organise conversations into different channels (perhaps for specific projects, one for technical support, general chat, and so forth).
The app also supports video calling. You can use the feature to talk to your colleagues about projects and work in-depth, without having to type everything into a DM. While this isn’t a replacement for cloud storage services, you are able to drag, drop and share files with your colleagues directly within Slack. It’s also compatible with services such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Box.
To round things off, Slack even has a free version, although unsurprisingly it has limitations (in terms of the number of messages stored, overall storage space and so forth).
Trello
An app for organising all your projects
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REASONS TO BUY
+Clean, easy-to-use interface+Free version
REASONS TO AVOID
-Not many comms features
If you have ever looked into project management software and online collaboration tools, then no doubt you’ve come across Trello. Available on the web and with mobile apps, it lets you easily organize projects and work on them with colleagues.
The platform allows you to work with boards or lists, which can be organised by teams and different tasks. And within these, you can set up to-do lists and delegate amongst colleagues. There’s also the option to assign comments to cards – a quick way to give feedback to others.
Furthermore, Trello boasts a number of integrations with apps such as Evernote, GitHub, Google Drive and Slack. You can download the app for free, but there are premium options available which give access to more features.
The Premium pricing tier unlocks a number of additional administrative features for better organization. There’s also an Enterprise edition which is priced according to the number of users required, and provides some additional organizational management features.
Ryver
An easy-to-use collaboration platform
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REASONS TO BUY
+Easy-to-use interface+Comprehensive platform
REASONS TO AVOID
-Rivals have more features
Ryver is similar to Slack, aiming to give your organisation a highly effective means of communication, and an easy way to talk over tasks, ensuring that deadlines are met.
What makes Ryver a compelling option is the fact that you can create as many teams as you want within the app, and easily categorise them to boot. As is the case with Slack, you can use the platform to set up chats with groups and individuals.
There are some interesting filters, too. You can control who sees the things you say and post in the app, and obviously enough, join the teams that are most relevant to you. All company posts are located within a Facebook-style newsfeed, and you can mark posts to come back to them later on.
There’s also a host of native clients across mobile and desktop, including Mac and Linux. There’s also a premium version for enterprise which offers workflow automation, Single Sign-On (SSO), and advanced team management.
Filestage
The second one in the list of tools for online collaboration is Filestage. Filestage gives teams the easiest possible way to manage the content review process. The project management software and platform makes it simple for internal and external stakeholders to leave in-context feedback on videos, images, PDFs, and more. The tool also generates to-do lists based on those comments to make sure your team never misses a piece of feedback. With Filestage, you can review and approve in real-time, external partners and clients can comment without registering, version control makes projects easy to manage and easy to see as to which stakeholders have approved a file.
What is unique about Filestage?
- Easy review – FileStage makes feedback gathering simple, you don’t even have to sign-up, if you are a reviewer, to carry out the review process.
- Comments – reviewers can directly comment on files to share feedback making the process easy and less time consuming.
- Consistency – by giving you a central place to review files and share feedback, FileStage helps you develop consistency in your feedback sharing process.
- Creative management – with easy-to-use features for reviewing and feedback sharing, FileStage aids in creative management and quick collaboration for teams as well.
- Time saver – by simplifying the process of creative reviews and approvals, the software saves a lot of time that was earlier spent by teams juggling through email threads.
Acquire
Acquire customer support software is an easy to use, multi-channel customer communication platform. It is ideal for businesses of all sizes. The software is equipped with the latest customer engagement options, particularly live chat, chatbot, cobrowsing, voice calls, and video chat to deliver high-quality support to your customers quickly and efficiently.
What is unique about Acquire?
- Customizable – one of the best things about this customer support software is that it is completely customizable according to your business needs. You can choose the apps that suit your requirements and use it just the way you want to.
- Chat routing and history – Acquire also gives you the option to track chat history for better information management. You can even route chats by tagging your team members for complex queries for which you don’t have an answer.
- Tracking – with Acquire you have the option to track various factors of performance like chat time periods, total number of chats, demographics and others.
- Automate responses – you can send messages proactively to customers based on their location, behavior and various other factors.
- Data security – Acquire enables you to share PII (personally identifiable information) in an encrypted manner to ensure complete safety of your data
- Video chat – you can switch to video chat for a better customer service experience from within your chat window.
Nectar
Nectar is an award-winning employee recognition & rewards platform that bolsters online collaboration. It creates a simple, standardized way for organizations to give out recognition, spot bonuses, awards and wellness challenges all within budget. This includes peer to peer recognition as well as manager to direct reports.
With Nectar, you can reinforce great work anytime, anywhere through an interactive recognition feed. Keep morale up, teams connected and promote your company’s core values in an online working environment.
Pros
- Connects with your other tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams and more to make recognition as seamless as possible
- Has a robust rewards engine with hundreds of global gift card options or branded company swag
- Unlike others in this space, Nectar aligns with its customers through Fair Billing. You only pay for ACTIVE users instead of per employee per month. They also don’t do contracts or implementation fees.
- Has a free tier along with paid plans
Explore pricing and features to find the Nectar plan that best fits your team.
Cons
- Wish there was more functionality on the free tier
- Reward options are limited outside of the US, UK or Australia
Otter.ai
Otter automatically transcribes your audio into text. Text notes full of timesaving ways to search, find, and share with your team no matter where they are. Otter has several integrations with apps like Zoom that make collaboration and remote work faster and more efficient.
Price: Starts at $9.99, billed every month. Learn more on Otter.ai Plan’s pricing page.
Free Plan: Yes, with limited usage and features. Get started.
Here are just a few of the things we love about Otter and the one minus we could think of.
Pros
- Otter integrated with Zoom making it quick and easy to add live comments, delegate tasks, and action items in real-time
- Allow Zoom participants to add photos, audio, and highlights in real-time to create collaborative meeting notes
- Get a text summary of your meetings instantly, no waiting for notes to be cleaned up. No delays, no loss in productivity
- Search within and across all your transcribed conversations
Cons
- Love that Otter is available on desktop and mobile we wish more of Otter Premiums were available in the free version
Conclusion
Collaborative Tools for Business lets you bring the best of the web into your intranet. Wikis, blogs, email with enterprise social network features, and more work seamlessly with Microsoft SharePoint to bring interactive content to your business.