The Key To Business Collaboration: Data

Collecting, connecting and visualizing data is the need of every enterprise these days since they hold the key to business collaboration. Data helps in measuring the issue and verifying the result. In order to see improvement in results, data is an area where every business must focus on as it has become one of the most crucial factors to bolster a competitive edge over your rivals.

Departments in business collaboration are bound together by data:

A shared goal is one of the most critical things that you need to see between departments if they are to align. Each department in business collaboration has its own set of responsibilities, quotas, budgets and objectives. The only thing that stays constant in every enterprise is the need to innovate in order to give results that are better. Hence, data has become an important factor that binds everything together.

Whether or not our technologies and ideas are good enough is determined by data and there is no one person who can determine that effectively without analyzing data. Such information lies beyond the border of a particular department.

IT is implanted into every conversation by data:

Companies which are data-driven and customer-centric rely heavily on data for planning, analyzing, predicting and executing plans. IT has been brought to front line because of this reason and now acts as an expert consultant on how data can be leveraged the best. IT isn’t limited to providing data anymore but explains the possibilities too.

Thus, data now holds the key for a business collaboration to succeed. A business enterprise can hold an edge over its competing enterprises by concentrating on data.

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How to Increase Collaboration in a Workplace with a Mobile, Social Intranet?

Social Network and Mobile phones have become a way of life. This is how we communicate and manage our tasks everyday. So, having same options for how we work makes more sense.

The Vice President of IT for St. Joseph Health, David Baker, recognized this and set out to build a social and mobile solution at the Health care organization. David's main goal is to increase collaboration and improve productivity for employees at 14 facilities across three states.

The ways to Boost Workplace Collaboration:

1. Find out that employees need more: David describes St. Joseph’s previous legacy intra-net tool as a 'glorified repository'. If the company has 25-thousand employees, only 1 thousand were considered users, and among them only 100 were active and just four were categorized as “power users.” Also, there was a general frustration among employees about not being able to get access to the information they were looking for. So, it is better to develop a completely new intra-net solution.

2. Build it a Place where People Wants to go: The tag line of St. Joseph Health for the staff hub project is “Email is where information goes to hide.” Mobile and social intra-net has liberated data and info for employees, and encouraged interaction and collaboration across the business.

“Folks from Northern California, Southern California, and Texas, that may have not had a voice or understood there are other people out there working on similar stuff, can connect. It's helping us to become a true enterprise company,” says David Baker.

3. Encourage Leadership Support: David made a request to St. Joseph’s top management that they try to log into Staff hub everyday to read a few posts. He provide them the tool available on their mobile device for this. He asked them to post one time a week as employees are always interested in what their leadership has to say. The result was CEOs and VPs become regular contributors from the beginning, encouraging adoption company wide.

Follow these three ways to increase collaboration in a workplace with mobile and social intra-net. Do you have any other idea in your mind? Share with us in the comment section, Click here to visit our website right now.

Are you Using the Right Communication for your Business?

Technology has largely influenced business around the world. This you can see through emerging modes of alternative communication. But from so many available communication solutions, how do we choose exactly what mode of communication to use with our co-workers, customers and acquisitions from all over the world?

 

Use of technology communication systems such as phones and video conferencing, made many companies moving towards long-distance collaboration. But, video conferencing can be a great benefit to businesses as it cuts down on the costly loss of time and money caused by excessive air travel.

But, it is important to recognize that technology should not replace travel and face-to-face communication altogether. Some business practices needs to be done personally. So how do you know when to do which?

Here are some different modes of communication and see when one proves to be most effective: 

1. Email: Emails can be most effective solution for simple question and answer solutions, calendar reminders and one-on-one communication. On the other hand, during group collaboration and brainstorming, sending out multiple emails with new updates is not entirely effective.

2. Video Conferencing: It is a great way to communicate with a small group of people. This method can be used to generate new ideas, check progress of projects, solve small issues and saves tons of time and frustration. With video conferencing, you can work together quickly to come up with solutions that work for everyone in a real-time environment. 

3. When to Move out of Workplace: When you have to deal with a large group of people, train personnel, or have to land new clients, then it is better to have face to face interaction. Face to face contact is key to establishing healthy business relationships. When the deal has been signed and you have worked through the major decisions and content, then video conferencing can become a great asset to your business endeavors.

Which mode of communication you prefer? Does your business use one more than any other Communication Solutions? Share with us in the comments below.

Best Social Media Collaboration Platforms

Social media is not about conversations only, but it is also about collaboration also. Keeping this in mind, it would be interesting to take a look at some of the most well known digital tools available to help collaboration.

Here are 7 Best Social Media Collaboration Platforms:

1. Atlassian Confluence: It offers a powerful wiki-based solution to enterprise collaboration. Using this tool, content can be simply dragged and dropped from the desktop to the platform, thus eliminate the need for keeping track of attachments sent via email.

 

2. Google Documents:  Simultaneously reading and editing of files makes Google Docs ideal for students and other casual collaborative groups. The updated version of Google apps offers additional security options for business. 

3. Adobe Acrobat: It allows teams to work collaboratively on documents through their browsers. Various options on Adobe Acrobat for web conferencing and screen-sharing provide additional communication channels.

 4. Basecamp: This platform offers collaborative messaging and file sharing. Using Basecamp, project management can be easily tracked with milestones and deadlines. A team can set up to-do lists, calendars, projects & more all at one easy to login site.

5. Sharepoint: It provides a single platform for employees to work collaboratively through various methods such as wikis and work flows. Here you can create personal profiles which allow teams to better understand each other’s skills, interests and experience.

6. Tibbr: This collaboration platform uses a design that is familiar to Facebook users. One key feature is the ability for employees to follow subjects, stay tuned on news and developments in their area of business.

7. Socialcast:  It allows employees to discuss projects remotely through a micro-blogging service, accessible from smart phone. The Town Hall extension on Socialcast enables discussion between executives and employees.

So, these were the seven social media collaboration platform that you can use. And, if you are using any other platform, then please share with us.

Online Collaboration Alternatives To Sharepoint For Small Businesses to Increase Productivity

If you want to run business in today's competitive economy, then you need to gain more flexibility, enhanced information exchange and collaborative teamwork. Well, this shows the importance of collaborative technology.

Today, Microsoft SharePoint is the most prominent solution for collaboration. It is an on-premise collaborative software model, but is more suited to big businesses with huge IT budgets and large number of employees. Microsoft Share-point also has some disadvantages like huge setup costs, no email functionality, software complexities, and costly training and support issues.

But, the SAAS (software-as-a-service) approach gives small businesses a viable alternative to access this software over the Internet at reasonable fees. Here are some packages that could offer valuable productivity gains for small businesses that host websites on 100TB servers:

1. HyperOffice: It is an alternative solution for the small businesses moving from on-premise software such as Microsoft SharePoint to the cloud. Small Businesses need only a broadband connection to access this robust software solution at low costs. Some other benefits includes HyperOffice  has that lack in SharePoint include email functionality, drag and drop portal publisher, an interactive Gantt chart in place of the static Gantt chart in SharePoint and forums.

2. Box.com: This is one of the best Business collaboration software alternative offers a scalable, affordable and simple alternative. Box.com provides small businesses with features such as file storage, file collaboration and content management on the cloud. Also, it is simple to synchronize your files on the desktop, receive feedback at a nominal price and share them with colleagues.

3. Huddle: This alternative is one of the best cloud collaboration tools. It is designed with ease and efficiency in mind, and thousands are using it for enterprise collaboration and content management. Small businesses can easily manage and exchange information or projects with others using Huddle. It also allows you to track project deadlines, view late projects, milestones, completed tasks and even reassign projects, thus making collaboration easy and efficient.

4. Google Apps: This is a free alternative to Microsoft SharePoint. Google Apps offers simplicity, efficiency and clarity, allowing small businesses to organize the day-to-day schedules, files, projects and teams securely. Some other features offered include easy navigation, advanced searches, email integration and free conference calls.

So, these were the four alternatives to Microsoft Sharepoint that small businesses can use and increase their productivity.

How to Overcome the Barriers to Communication?

The barriers to communication exist all around us. Sometimes your message is misinterpreted by team members during meetings. We generalize information in every conversation and yet think that we clearly understand what others are saying and why they are saying it.

There are many ways through which we interpret the information given to us, and these cause us to have a misunderstanding. So how can we overcome the barriers that effectively blind us to meaning and comprehension? 

Following are the five ways to overcome communication barriers: 

1. Understand how your way of seeing things is different from others: Try to predict the feelings and attitude of the receiver. What will be their expectation? What prejudices might they have? What about their state of mind when you are communicating? If you know these things before communicating, then you can reduce the risk of misinterpretation.

2. Feedback from receiver: Don't ask the receiver, ‘Do you Understand?’.  This is because they will most often say ‘yes’ as they see things in the way they want to understand it. Instead, ask what is their understanding of the message?

3. Speak Face to Face: This will allow for questions and, also allow you to see the body language of the receiver, which will convey much more meaning than over the phone or through email.

4. Use the Right Communication Channel: Use email for its proper purpose. It means that don't send an email if it's quicker to pick up the phone or go and talk to the person. We are rapidly losing the art of conversation, so don't add to that by using the wrong channel.

5. Make it easy for others to listen to you: Develop your communication style that one of a conversationalist who is able to make a point quickly. If your key message is lost in the morass of a thousand words, then people will wonder what you mean and what the purpose is. Brevity and Clarity are the watchwords.

Using the above points, you will be able to certainly reduce the risk of barriers interrupting the key messages you want to make. If you know any other way to overcome the communication barriers, then share with us below in the comment section.

4 Insanely useful Collaboration Tools Your Team Should Know

Do you remember the first time when you saw the real-time collaboration feature for Google Docs first time? Now it seems obvious, but in 2005 seeing changes happen live felt nothing short of magical.

Today, after ten years, Google Drive continues to add improvements, Microsoft is offering real-time collaboration in their on-line version of Office, and Dropbox is working on a real-time collaboration app of their own.

But, still many people are stuck using the email-and-collect-revisions method of collaboration. Today, many cool websites and apps looks at four tools that fix that for you.

1. Fiddle.md: It is limited to writers in one key way, i.e. it offers a word processor. While for millions word processors are the default tool for writing, but for a growing number of people their paper-focused design is obsolete. And so the popularity of Markdown is growing, which is a quick way to format documents destined for the web.

Fiddle.md allows you collaborate on Markdown files. The interface features a real-time-preview, and also you don't even need an account to try the service.

2. GraphPaper: If you are looking for a way to combine a bunch of different collaboration tools, then GraphPaper is probably worth a look. This tool lets you quickly make a sheet combining images, text and even embeds from other websites.

3. Canavaniser: If you love the idea of brainstorming with your team and are looking for something simple, then try Canavanizer. This tool provides you a variety of brainstorming templates which you can use to think up ideas with your team.

4. Frame.io: This app looks to make collaborating on anything – from images to videos to sound – easily. In Frame.io, annotation tools, comments and the ability to upload various revisions of the same file all are there in one place. A free account gives you 2 GB to work with, for more than that you will have to upgrade.

These were the four insanely useful collaboration tools that your team should know. But, there might be chances that one of your favorite tools wasn't covered. So, share your favorite real-time collaboration tools with us in the comments below.