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Published June 16th, 2016 by

5 Essential Tips for Choosing Online Collaboration Tool

5 Essential Tips for Choosing Online Collaboration Tool

Imagine you’re working on a new assignment or product. However, your team lives in different parts of America. Some are in Chicago, while others are in New York. You may be wondering how you can start working on the latest project if your teammates are not in the same area.

Nowadays, distance is not an issue anymore when it comes to work. You can start working on your new assignment or product even if your group mates are in different states. You just need to get an online collaboration tool. With this innovation, you can share their work in an efficient yet simple manner.

Before getting the top online collaboration tools, there are a lot of things you need to learn about this software. This article will discuss what it is, why you should use it for your work, and how to choose the right collaboration tool.

What is an online collaboration tool?

Online collaboration office tools have various forms, ranging from instant messaging, to web conferencing, to video conferencing. Some applications are for a particular purpose, while others offer more than one function, depending on your choice.

If you search it on the web, the term, “collaboration tool,” refers to an application that helps people to work on a single task to reach their goals. As for its benefits, they say that it’s a working environment that allows workers to work simultaneously, in spite of geographical location. In other words, it creates a virtual office without walls.

There are several tools, which fall into this category, but for the sake of this article, we describe it as a software application that provides numerous functions, which can help the company reach success, regardless of the distance of the people involved in this work. It can be either integrated or built with other applications.

Benefits of Online Collaboration Tool

Online collaborative tools don’t just provide a virtual office on the Internet. It does much more than that. There are several things that you can get from this software. Here are some of the reasons why teamwork online collaboration tool is a great investment for your business.

First: it enables you to track your project with ease. Monitoring the progress of your project is hard, even if you, and your teammates, are working in the same area. What more if you are all scattered in different places? With online collaboration, the team leader can track the progress of the project, from identifying who made the latest changes to tagging someone to review the sheet. It’s because this tool offers a variety of features that will help the team members see the progress of their work.

Moreover, it removes the use of email. Team members don’t need to send an email to one another if they need to talk with their teammates. With this application, they can chat with them or leave them a message straight to their inbox.

Second: team members can work anywhere. It doesn’t matter whether you live in the eastern part of the US, and your teammates are on the other side of the country or the world if your employees are foreigners. As long as they have an Internet access, they can start working on their assignments wherever they may be.

If you’re on a business trip, and you want to monitor your team members, you just need to open the software to see the progress of your assignment. Hence, the saying, “Technology makes the world smaller,” is suitable for this tool.

Third: it makes the reporting task a bit easier than the usual way of reporting. Almost all work projects require reporting, and report time gives you stress, especially when you need to deliver a report immediately. But no matter how critical the assignment is, it’s quite hard to monitor the changes made for a particular project, especially when you’re a team leader of a large group.

With the use of the top online collaboration tools, you can quickly produce informative reports, which include all alterations made for a particular project, enabling workers to concentrate on their tasks.

Fourth: you can do things quickly. It’s probably one of the best online collaboration tool benefits that you can get. Before online collaboration came into the picture, leaders arranged a meeting or gave the team members a call to review the project. However, everything has changed after development companies created this software.

With this tool, you don’t need to setup a meeting or call your teammates to talk about the project. If you have an announcement, you can just post it or upload a document to the software application. Your group mates will receive a notification so they can check what you’ve uploaded or posted, then they will implement the new policy on the projects they’re working, making it easier to announce the latest order on the project.

Last: all the uploaded files are in the same place. When you are looking for a document to review in your email, you have to check the inbox or the spam section to see if it’s there. If you can’t find it because of the number of emails you received, you use the search box to look for it.

But if you use an online collaboration task management tool, you don’t have to do these things as the documents are in the same place. You just need to go to that section and find a file you want to review.

Choosing the Right Online Collaboration Tool

Online collaboration project management tools aren’t just for companies who have employees living in different places. Even if you’re working with your teammates in the same building, you can use this software too; thus, allowing the team to work efficiently on the project. However, with the number of options to choose from, how do you select a tool that fits the needs of your business?

To make things easier, here are the things that you must do when choosing an online collaboration tool.

  1. Select an application that is compatible with your operating system. Moreover, check if it has a customization feature, as it will allow you to operate the tool with the business process you’re using.
  2. Make sure that the features provided by the software will help in running the business. There are certain facilities that a collaboration software has, which you don’t need for your business. Thus, you have to check what the product has to offer before you purchase it. If the tool doesn’t have the features that you’re looking for, you have to look for another service provider until you find the right software application.
  3. It’s critical to use an online tool that has an optimum data protection and is using a reliable firewall system. Identity theft and hackers are prevalent on the Internet. If you use a collaborative tool that has a low-security standard, chances are unauthorized people will get into your software without your permission.

However, if the software you’re using provides excellent file security and a reliable firewall system, only authorized people can open the software.

  1. Know what the tool has to offer with regards to data backup and storage information. Like cloud storage, a reliable online collaboration tool features data backup and storage. Since you’re uploading documents to the software, it should allow you to backup and save files to prevent data loss.

Moreover, you need to find a software application that gives permission to retrieve files you have deleted. If the tool doesn’t have these features, you need to look for another one to avoid losing valuable documents.

  1. Know the cost of the product and service. Getting an online collaboration application is a considerable investment. Hence, you need to know how much you need to spend for it. Check if there are hidden charges so you won’t be surprised once you buy the software.

Apart from that, you need to make an online collaboration tool comparison. Search for reviews of online collaboration tools and know which product fits your business needs.

Empowering your teammates with online collaboration software can improve productivity, track the progress of the project efficiently, and enhance workflow. There are numerous options to choose from, regardless of the field. There are tools specifically made for designers, and there are also collaboration applications created for the productivity of the office. Still, there are tools, which provide functions for both planners and executives.

When selecting the right online collaboration program, you have to know what your business needs. You have to compare the tools from one another to see the strongest and weakest points of each product. To know all these things, you have to look for reviews of online collaboration tools and read them. These write-ups will tell you what you need to know about a particular product.

There are several websites specifically made for providing collaboration software reviews. CrowdReviews is one of them. This site gives a list of collaboration tools, as well as customer reviews, helping you choose the right software application for your business.

Trevor Price

Trevor Price helps small businesses leverage mobile technology to reach their audience and extend their capabilities in delivery, information, and tracking.

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