Collaboration tools are becoming popular for businesses which makes collaborating with customers easier than before. For instance, social media is a prime example of the importance of collaboration tools. It enables consumers to communicate with businesses through sites like Facebook and Twitter.
The collaboration tools enable communication between the provider and purchasers. The free chat room can be used to ask any question about the product, see chart below for the average response time of the providers. Collaboration tools are very important because there are “no boundaries” or restrictions imposed for communication between the purchasing agent and the provider. This allows mutual communication of information regarding details of delivery, packaging, shipping material, methods, etc.
benefits of online collaboration tools
Travel cost savings
When you’ve got to travel for a meeting the costs can rise quickly.
Transport, accommodation and food can be expensive – especially if you’re going abroad or away for an extended period of time.
So how do collaboration tools help? For, a start you can login anytime, anywhere so there’s no need to be in the same place as the person you’re meeting.
Once logged in, tools such as calendars, conference call facilities, and task management allow you to carry out your meeting and immediately record any follow up actions.
Reminders can then be sent out to ensure that these have been completed. Much better than scribbling notes on a bit of paper!
Collaborate on documents in real-time
The typical way to collaborate on documents is email. You open the document, make a change then send it onto the next person. Job done.
This can get messy though. As more emails are sent, it gets harder to track who has made changes and which version is the latest.
Document collaboration is at the heart of any tool. Simply upload your document and assign colleagues or teams to different chapters. They can then work together in real-time to get the content exactly how you want it.
For total transparency, you can then use the audit trail to see what changes have been made and by whom.
Stop using email (or at least reduce its use)
OK, so it may not be realistic to stop using email completely.
With 124.5 billion of them being sent and received each day by businesses, you can see just how popular this particular communication method is.
But is emailing all it’s cracked up to be? In our opinion, it’s not for these reasons.
Security
With news that email has been named as a top risk for 2018, it’s now imperative that you look for more secure ways to share sensitive data.
As mentioned earlier in this post, leading vendors regularly test and put robust security measures in place to protect your data.
Can you be sure that email providers do the same? Would your clients and partners be happy to take this risk?
Collaboration Helps Brainstorm Creative Ideas
It may seem like a no brainer, but a true brainstorm is not possible without collaboration. Collaboration provides a safety net; it helps you catapult your thinking and develop ideas that may seem crazy at first.
Working with a small group of trusted teachers gave me the opportunity to turn what I thought was a silly idea at the time into a unique and creative lesson plan. When it was time for my class to study Elizabethan England, I had the idea to have my students rewrite Shakespeare into different time periods that we had already studied. I was hesitant to bring this idea to a large group — it seemed so out there! But after developing the idea with my peers, I had a new and creative lesson plan that my students would love. Peer-to-peer collaboration can turn a small idea into the seeds for something fabulous.
Learning Collaboratively Helps Students
The collaboration shouldn’t end among the teachers — it should be used during the school day among students, as well! Plan activities that give students the opportunity to work and collaborate together to learn and grow from each other.
Collaborative learning has been shown to not only develop higher-level thinking skills in students, but boost their confidence and self-esteem as well. Group projects can maximize educational experience by demonstrating the material, while improving social and interpersonal skills. Students learn how to work with various types of learners and develop their leadership skills.
When we work together, we create a better learning experience. Teacher collaboration positively impacts student achievement, and allows us as educators to explore new territory.
Importance of Collaboration in Organizations
It’s the foundation of all work processes
An organization is an entity made up of a group or groups of people focused on delivering ideas, products, resources, services or solutions that deliver value to their end consumers. Collaboration is the glue that binds the various processes in an organization together. It is the foundation of all work processes, and while technology has made it much easier, much of the basics of work collaboration remain unchanged.
It’s what brings teams together to achieve common goals
Common goals define a team’s role in an organization. While individuals have responsibilities, teams have a structure that streamlines those responsibilities into output that helps them achieve their common goals. The interface that makes this possible is work collaboration. It is the process where individual members of a team communicate and transact work to help build an desirable outcome that meets their definitions of success.
It helps drive growth and innovation
Innovation has always been a core driver of growth at most organizations and collaboration is key to driving it. Collaboration facilitates the exchange of ideas and thoughts among team members who then weigh in on them with collective expertise. Collaboration in this sense acts as a force multiplier for innovative ideas and as checks and balances for ideas that can’t be executed or ones that need more thought put into them.
Technological Barriers to Online Collaboration
Perhaps the biggest concern a company has when dealing with online collaboration is security. For most companies, data is a valuable commodity. In fact, the correct term for it is intellectual property. The data might include sensitive financial information, proprietary formulas and algorithms or secret research. It’s the sort of information that can give a company an edge in the marketplace. It’s definitely not the kind of information executives want to share with everyone.
Many people feel the online world is too vulnerable to spies. They cite famous cases in which hackers infiltrated some of the most secure data systems in the world. If hackers can find a way to access information held in the Pentagon’s databases, what’s to stop them from snooping around corporate files?
While it might be impossible to design a truly hack-proof system, security developers can make it so difficult for hackers to access information that very few people would attempt it. In addition, if the security developers continually update protective measures, it can be difficult for a hacker to exploit the system. The key is to avoid boasting that a security system is perfect. Plenty of hackers view those claims as personal challenges.
Another technical barrier is software-related. Some companies rely on customized software to conduct business. Their software might collect or analyze data in a specific way that isn’t supported by commercial products. That could limit the company’s choices when it comes to online collaboration. A third-party hosting service wouldn’t have the right software installed on its servers. The company would either need to find ways to accomplish the same tasks using available software, allow a third party to have access to proprietary applications or host the collaboration service on its own Web servers.
If two companies want to work together, proprietary software can be an even bigger headache. Should a company share its customized applications with another organization? If not, the two companies will have to find a way to work around the compatibility issue.
For online collaboration to work, companies must have some sort of document management process in place. Otherwise, it’s impossible to tell if and when someone has accessed and changed a file. In many cases, it’s important to limit the number of active copies of a file to a single version. Otherwise, employees may make changes that are reflected in one copy of a file, but not in any others. There would be no way to ensure that any single copy was accurate. That’s why many online collaboration systems only allow one active version of a file at any particular time, though most also archive past versions.
Not all online collaboration challenges are technical. Some of them depend on how humans interact with one another in an online setting.
Conclusion
Collaboration is essential when working with a global workforce. In order to succeed in a global economy, you must be able to communicate and collaborate with people from different places. Working in a virtual environment can be challenging since there are no common physical places for people to meet. Without the ability to see the people you’re sharing information with, it’s easy to miss clues that could be misinterpreted or misunderstood.