How to use collaboration tools to empower your users
In a previous post we spoke about how you can empower users to be more productive by giving them a more flexible way of ...
In a previous post we spoke about how you can empower users to be more productive by giving them a more flexible way of working. But once they have the ability to work from any device, at any place and at any time, what should you do next to drive productivity further?
The answer is simple: drive collaboration
Collaboration should be a key focus for your business. In a digital world with more options for flexibility, it’s important that you have applications in place to help your employees work more effectively together, so that they collectively help your business to thrive and grow.
Here are two key tips for helping your users collaborate easier and be more creative in the way they work with each other.
- Unleash the power of Microsoft Teams
Teams is the number one tool for empowering users to collaborate – it has now overtaken Slack and Hangouts as the most used business collaboration tool. Who would have thought a simple instant messaging application would change the way we work together so drastically?
Teams’ chat, meetings and file sharing functions are all super effective, but what really sets this product apart is how well it integrates with the rest of Office 365 ecosystem. For example, if you drag and drop a document for a teammate to review, it automatically gives the permissions needed to co-edit it. Creating a ‘team’ for your project automatically creates a Sharepoint site. You can also link in a dedicated digital workboard through OneNote, as well as to other Office 365 applications.
Teams is designed to help you organize and categorize data for each of your projects. The ability to have different chat channels for different workstreams gives you one place to discuss every little detail with everyone involved, without having to waste time searching for contacts, information or projects in Outlook.
In addition, there are many other application integrations available alongside the examples above. You can also integrate other third-party applications, and it's B2B compatible with any other partner using Teams. Working in project management has never been this easy.
- Use and share co-editing, tracking and tags
Working in the cloud brings many new possibilities to how you can collaborate. With powerful cloud technology and Office 365, you can now co-edit data in real time, easily track changes from multiple users, and tag team members when you need their input – it’s truly game-changing.
Imagine working on the same document as a colleague, without having to send documents back and forth to each other. There will be no more ‘read-only’ popping up on documents because one of your colleagues opened it on a file server far away and forgot to close it before they went home.
Imagine being able to share this same document with an external partner, giving them the same editing, tracking and tagging privileges as your organization. Once you have tried this out, it’s close to impossible to imagine going back to working in the old school way, with a file server and the risk of many different versions.
Once your users are empowered to collaborate effectively: your business will be unstoppable, however online collaboration still sounds scary for some people. How can all this freedom possibly be secure? Of course, it’s important to make sure that you have compliance and security in mind, especially as your business changes. So how can we make sure our security is safeguarded, even as our flexibility increases and our business scales?
