A lot of new technologies have been incorporated into businesses in the past few years as new strategies are adopted and the latest software installed aimed to make our lives much simpler than ever before and taking the business to a whole new level. The problem is, unless you’re involved in the development process with the products, you often don’t understand what a lot of the technologies are or what they do but you hear a lot about them around the office or on the news.
Collaboration software is one of those terms that you might have heard of but never fully understood. At business level it’s often referred to as enterprise collaboration software and is essentially the process of working with a number of other people on the same project and sharing files so that you can all achieve the same goals or report your findings.
When you share files or documents that is collaborating – working together. Many businesses adopt these systems so that they can safely and securely share files between employees and, optionally, their clients. More and more processes are performed online these days rather than working using paper-based systems that would be written, edited by someone else and stored in a folder on a shelf in the store cupboard. Today, everything is saved ‘in the cloud’ where it can be accessed quickly, easily and from any location using secure login details meaning that only those who need to see the project can do so, keeping prying eyes at bay.
They also aim to improve efficiency within the company, helping people to find specific documents quickly and easily so that they can report on progress to their clients, and also so that employees and project managers know exactly how things are going with that specific campaign. Today, it’s all about being efficient and effective with people wanting everything now, and collaboration software allows them to do that.
Task lists can be created, documents can be shared – as mentioned – and articles or their links can be put into the system so that people can view them at their leisure when they’re relevant to the project they’re working on. For example, you might find an article online that would be relevant to something you’re doing for one of your clients, like an industry development, and you could share this into the collaboration software for people to login, click and read when they’re on their break or at home, or even before they start working on the project so that they have all of the latest information.
