Top Benefits of Using a Collaboration Platform

When a company uses teams that work closely together to meet business goals, tasks in areas such as product development, project management, documentation creation and review, and order processing are carried out much more efficiently. Tight and effective collaboration means all team members can provide input from their fields of expertise and contribute to arriving at the best possible solutions.

Collaborative platforms can facilitate the process, delivering excellent results within a short time frame. When team members can contribute easily within an intuitive and transparent framework, successful outcomes can build team cohesiveness and result in improved performance and productivity. The right collaboration platform can promote such a development and make team success easier to achieve.

Improved Communication Helps Teams Become More Productive

A key benefit of using a good collaboration platform is improved communication among team members. With a comprehensive communication platform such as Slack, team members working on a project can easily ask questions, provide information, share data, and detail progress. Rather than sift through endless email chains, employees can exchange messages with an entire team organized into project-specific “channels” that are much easier to access.

Project and task management tools help each team member be more aware of what the others are doing, where they face challenges, and where they have been successful in solving a problem. When task management tools are also used, the whole team can get a good idea of what has been accomplished and what remains to be done. When you can see that you’re ahead or behind the rest of the team in your work, you can offer to help others catch up or ask for help yourself. Effective communication can increase team productivity and the team as a whole becomes more efficient.

Collaboration Tools Let the Best People Work Together Regardless of Location

Even before the pandemic, it was often challenging to assemble the right people to work on solving a particular problem. Perhaps your New York team needed extensive guidance from specialists in your L.A. office, but when they flew in, it turned out their expertise didn’t quite fit the problem. Today, with many employees working from home, the challenges are even greater. Collaboration tools can allow people from any location to contribute in a live setting similar to a meeting in a much more economical manner.

Depending on your needs and your budget, collaboration applications can range from simple online meeting tools such as Zoom to comprehensive team support solutions. Online meetings are simple to arrange and inexpensive. Meeting participants only need a computer with a camera and sound to participate. Applications with greater integration of workflows and documentation cost more and may require IT support services to set up.

All these solutions allow team members to log in from wherever they are and interact with other employees or even external consultants. Images of team members, work documents, or photographs can be displayed on the screens and everyone can speak when they have something to contribute. Online meetings have become a standard way for employees to interact during the pandemic and positive experiences have encouraged companies to keep them for many collaboration needs.

Shared Document Editing Gets Work Done Quickly and Efficiently

When you see the need for a comprehensive collaboration solution that integrates functions such as communication, workflows, documentation, and scheduling, platforms such as Microsoft Teams can meet those requirements. Within such applications, document access, viewing, editing, and printing can be controlled and assigned to employees as needed. Shared documents can be edited in such a way that each team member sees what is being changed as other team members are editing the document. Such a process can save a lot of time when creating documentation and the end result can be a quality document that the whole team supports.

An IT Service Provider Can Help Define Needs and Set Up Your Platform

While it’s easy to set up online meetings, more comprehensive collaboration setups with multiple components may require some guidance and assistance from competent technical professionals to set them up so that they work smoothly together. An IT support services provider like GSDSolutions can help you evaluate your needs, determine which platform is the best fit, and come up with a recommendation of which features might be required. We provide IT services in the Bay Area and Central Valley that include training on how to use these collaboration tools as well as friendly and easy to access support.

Contact the specialists at GSDSolutions who can evaluate what you need and help you get set up with the right applications to boost your business’ productivity now!