For small businesses and startups, it is extremely important to choose the collaboration tools your business needs to meet consumer demand. It is often the case where members of your team are going to be asked to work together toward the successful conclusion in the delivery of a service or the creation of a product. Today, we will go over some considerations that decision makers need to sort through in order to find collaboration solutions that will help meet a business’ goals.
Make no mistake about it, larger businesses, with their larger budgets and team-specific solutions do the best collaborating. That certainly doesn’t mean that smaller businesses will find collaboration hard to implement or track, it just means that the more useful a tool is for a job, the better the tool is and the better that the job tends to end up.
Collaboration comes in a lot of different forms, and no business can last without some form of collaboration. After all, sales relaying orders can be considered a collaborative effort. What we’d like to highlight today are some technology trends that are used to build better collaboration. By mastering a strong culture of collaboration your business will improve.
One of the most important concepts to understand when discussing business collaboration has to be overwhelming demand that today’s businesses have for them. Since collaboration comes in many forms, we will largely be talking about the type of collaborative efforts that build additional value for the operation end of the business.
Some of the most utilized collaborative tools allow businesses to cut their overhead costs by hiring outsourced workers. With a lot of businesses willing to rely on outsourced talent, collaboration fuels the work they do with the in-house talent to produce products and services that have value to customers. Let’s take a look at some of the technology that small and medium-sized business decision makers are looking at to help fuel necessary collaboration:
Communication
Collaboration doesn’t happen without communication, and while your business has had a phone system since you opened, today there are other tools that a business can use to promote strong collaboration. These include instant messaging, video conferencing, and new tools that have been created with collaboration in mind.
Integration
Another strategy that many businesses are using to improve collaboration is software integration. Integration is the act of streamlining workflow by having development teams create connections between core line-of-business software and productivity software. Since software is a massive part of almost every business, getting the software that your employees depend on to work directly with your management software is one way to effectively collaborate.
Management
Speaking of management software, finding the right management software can do wonders for team collaboration. Project management software, like Microsoft SharePoint, or collaboration apps like Slack, provide teams all the tools any project team would need. When your business is talking about improving collaboration in your day-to-day product or service delivery, however, choosing the right line-of-business software for your collaborative needs is important. Many businesses choose to rely on Professional Services Automation (PSA), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to ensure that customers, administrators, and staff are on the same page.
Collaborative efforts can be just the thing to take your business to the next level. If you have questions about solutions designed to solve your collaboration and productivity problems, call the IT experts at CoreTech today at (270) 282-4926 to get some answers.
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