Keep Reading: 15 Best Business Collaboration Tools.How are knowledge management systems used in healthcare? The easier it is to collaborate, the easier it is to succeed. Not every group needs the same type of tools for certain tasks, but all groups need diverse ways of functioning together. Any piece of technology that helps one person work with others to contribute to a larger mission is a collaboration tool worth using. Collaboration tools leverage the responsibilities and talents of each individual into the greater success of the team. Collaborative tools help teams succeedĪ team is only as good as the sum of its members and their ability to work together. Each person uses their skills and talents to drive the project forward in a show of true collaboration.
Likewise, if details X, Y, and Z aren’t told to Person B, they might not do their work appropriately, which adversely affects what Person C does.Ĭollaborative tools enable full group participation and synergy, so everyone contributes meaningfully. If Person A works off-site and can’t access collateral for their portion of the project, they’re unable to work on it, which can stall the greater effort. If members of a group can’t collaborate properly, they’re limited in the assistance they can provide.
Teams are successful because they’re more than the sum of their parts-but that’s only true if each part contributes to the whole. Enable full group participationĮvery member of a team is an asset. Collaboration tools help teams respond to changes as quickly as they’re expected to, to prevent setbacks and keep projects on-track. The ability to act, react, and reallocate resources as fast as projects change is an asset teams can’t function without. For example, Person A uploads client feedback on a logo to the #Logo Slack channel, where Person B can make changes, uploading a new iteration to Dropbox without changing the shared link. Modern collaboration tools help to create dynamic workflows and team agility. Teams need a way to adapt just as quickly collaboration tools give it to them. Business changes rapidly-daily and sometimes even hourly. Just because you structure a group project one way doesn’t mean that’s how it’ll progress. The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Or, from a proactive perspective, team members can see when others need help and collaborate to keep the project on-track. If a task isn’t finished, team leaders know who to hold accountable. With this visibility also comes an element of accountability.
Everyone is on the same page, working toward the same goal. The ability to see task timelines in a project management app is another great example.
Logging into a Google Doc and tracking changes alongside everyone else, for example. Every member of the team needs to see the bigger picture and how what they’re doing fits into it. Full team visibility and accountabilityĮxpecting people to collaborate without full visibility over what, exactly, they’re working on together is a recipe for disaster. Let’s take a look at some universal collaboration tool benefits.
No matter the nature of the software or what it’s used for, each one makes working together easier in some way. They’re all collaborative tools-part of a growing repertoire of thousands of apps and programs out there designed to facilitate group work. For example, if you plan a meeting and use a wayfinding app to send directions to participants, it’s a collaborative tool. This definition leaves the concept of collaboration itself wide open. A file sharing program that gives many people access to collateral.A video conferencing tool that lets people talk face-to-face.A project management app that defines tasks across a group.A chat app that lets multiple people brainstorm ideas.These tools come in all manner of varieties and purposes, but ultimately foster interaction between people. The simplest collaboration tools definition out there is actually as a catchall term for anything that two or more people use in conjunction with one another. There’s plenty of grey area in defining collaboration tools. Does it help a bunch of individuals work together in a meaningful way? Is a wayfinding app a collaboration tool? That depends. What about a chat or messenger client? Sure. But what are collaboration tools themselves? Is a project management app a collaboration tool? Of course. They help teams and groups work together toward a common goal. Collaboration tools are a simple concept to explain, but tricky to characterize.