Each of us collaborates on a daily basis. Whether it is talking to a friend on the phone or reading your Twitter feed. Collaboration allows for the exchange of ideas and has become a crucial component in any organization’s growth. Email, texting, chat, social media, phone calls, real-time file collaboration, teleconferencing…the list goes on and on. With so many ways to collaborate your organizational strategy can quickly become confused and disjointed.

While this topic is huge, we have isolated some key methods of collaboration that should be prioritized for integration into your team environment:

EMAIL ARCHIVING AND COMPLIANCY

Email itself is so integrated into most organizations that talking about it here is like talking about the need for engines at a race shop. What is not talked about nearly often enough is email’s role in compliancy and the options that are available. Email archiving and retention are an important topic that should be discussed regularly to make sure that your organization is meeting it’s regulatory commitments. Additionally, there are implications outside of compliancy that need to considered such as retention of accounting records in the event of an audit or email retention for employees that are no longer on the team.

CALENDAR AND CONTACT SHARING

This is a fun topic mainly because there is no right way to do this. Some manage their contacts and calendars through Outlook in M365, others use CRM software such as SaleForce and still others may choose to create their own system. The critical thing here is not how you do it, but whether the system you employ can interface with the rest of your Digital Ecosystem and allow real-time collaboration.

REAL-TIME MAILBOX SHARING

This is a huge advantage…especially as organizations grow. The ability to share mailboxes (both personal and group) allows multiple people to interface with the same information. As I’m sure we’ve all experienced, email can quickly get out of hand. Having the ability to split the load eliminates a single person from becoming an information bottleneck. While we like Microsoft 365 for this, there are plenty of systems that can provide this functionality. If you don’t currently have this ability, contact us so we can walk you through your options.

REAL-TIME DOCUMENT SHARING/EDITING

Gone are the days of emailing documents to a colleague and awaiting a return email with the updates your requested. Real-time document sharing allows for virtually unlimited amounts of users to be in the same document at the same time making edits and collaborating. Combine this with a good telecom solution and a solid screen sharing software and you can have people across the world working like they are all sitting at the same desk.

SCREENSHARING

In a word, screensharing is just awesome. Working with a colleague and they aren’t understanding what your describing? Share your screen! Trying to help someone with a computer problem? Have them share their screen! Found a new cat video that just must be seen on your call? Share your screen! There are numerous screensharing application out there but many of them are stand-alone and require yet another platform to learn. Make sure your screensharing is integrated into your collaboration and you’ll never go share hungry again.

VIDEO CONFERENCING

While we talk about this in the Telecommunication section we believe it is worth mentioning again here. Video Conferencing used to be a specialized service but as work from home policies have expanded and virtual meetings have become the norm, it is now an essential part of your collaboration platform. We’ve got plenty of option so don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

INTER-OFFICE CHAT

We love when retro tech comes back in a new and shiny package. Chat has been around since the beginning of the internet but has always struggled with integrating with the rest of your software. For that reason, it never really gained traction in the business world. That all changed in the last couple of years as application such as Teams, Slack, Facebook Messenger, and so many others made chat easier and more compatible than ever. Now it is essential and we can help you to implement the right solution.