Business First Family Business, Accounting, Finance, Investing, Marketing And Management
It’s a different workplace today and the tools of doing business have radically changed. Work practices have also changed significantly in the past decade. From meeting management to task reminders, the availability of digital options have made enterprises more productive.
There’s a plethora of digital tools and software on offer that can assist your business in simplifying and enhancing operations. According to a recent study conducted by IR and a third-party research company, there is a direct correlation between collaboration tools that are functioning effectively and the increased profitability of businesses who use them.
With their end goal being an increase in productivity and operational efficiency, different collaboration tools aim to solve challenges in communication flow. They also harness opportunities in a collaborative fashion. Let’s take a look at how collaboration tools can boost your enterprise’s productivity. Moreover, continue reading to learn how to optimize these tools to improve user satisfaction and ROI.
Problem Solving Catalyst
There was a time when solving work-related problems had to be in person or over the phone. Today, it is all about an effective unified communication tool. Collaboration software can help your team to work together more effectively. The best solutions enable teams to communicate, update and trouble-shoot problems even if they are scattered across the globe. Thus, collaboration tools positively impact businesses trying to expand internationally.
More Transparency At Work
It’s not just about easily monitoring progress and facilitating discussions with these tools. It is also about transparency. Everyone knows what everyone else is working on. This eliminates redundancies that lead to greater efficiency and productivity. Keep this in mind when trying to learn how to improve productivity among your team. Transparency also means that you can showcase your progress to your clients. Hence, collaboration tools positively impact businesses by offering more transparency.
Smoother Communication Flow
Effective communication has always been an essential element in developing a productive environment for any organization. There are unified communications platforms that offer instant messaging and quick file transfers. They also come equipped with a message search tool that lets you check back on important messages or tasks. Collaboration tools improve teams’ communication flows.
Increased Productivity
Collaboration tools reduce paperwork, which speeds up the project. This saves your team time, allowing them to focus on more important tasks. With a collaborative approach, a task that may have taken months to get resolved by an individual may need only a few hours to solve when a team’s collective expertise is used to get things done.
Advanced Security
You wouldn’t want to face the risk of losing sensitive customer data, financial documents or confidential information that could lead to disastrous results like fines, lawsuits or even loss of business. With the right collaboration tool, you can guarantee that you meet the highest security standards. Consider also using BYOD security strategies to protect your business data. Investing in collaboration tools which can secure your data, with end-to-end encryption, as well as access controls will allow you to manage exactly who is allowed to access and transfer sensitive data.
Negative Impact Of Low Quality Tools
As you can see, there are a plethora of benefits that can come from using collaboration tools. However, it is important to be aware that poorly performing tools can often serve to disrupt or inhibit workplace operations and performance more than they enhance them.
The aforementioned study conducted found that poorly performing UCC collaboration tools can have a significantly negative impact on both employee productivity and satisfaction. A considerable proportion of the UCC users surveyed, from over 500 different companies, reported high levels of frustration, low productivity and reduced adoption as a result of poorly managed real-time communications.
In fact, only 62% claimed to be satisfied with the overall performance of their UCC tools. The most common problems attributed to causing these substandard satisfaction, productivity and utilization rates, included weak audio quality, connection difficulties, insufficient connectivity and low-grade video quality.
Invest In Performance Management Tools
To ensure you gain the maximum benefit from your collaboration technology and do not suffer from the aforementioned pitfalls that stem from poor performance, it’s worth investing in high quality performance management tools. This enterprise and performance management solution makes sure your voice, video and collaboration ecosystems are operating effectively at all times. This is achieved through consistent monitoring, troubleshooting and optimizing of your UC environment.
Ultimately, no matter how effective your collaboration tool is, it is only when you pair the right tool with the most effective management solution that you will see the most considerable impact on your company’s bottom line and employee morale.
