Project-oriented work: the advantages offered by collaboration software
What is meant by collaboration?
Teamwork is an essential success parameter if a company wants to survive on the market. This is where collaboration tools come in as they are a good way to improve teamwork. The use of modern cloud solutions offers many advantages, such as quickly and easily moving to a home office. Digitalization makes the company future fit and helps team members from all countries work together on a project or task.
Collaboration means working together
In terms of software, collaboration is understood to mean an interplay of work processes, resource distribution, organization, communication, task management and central data access.
With this kind of software, everyone involved can work together on a topic since it takes away the impediments to interaction and the exchange of ideas.
How to “collab”
With appropriate software, such as our sharesuite, team members have the option of creating relevant projects and tasks, commenting on them and storing or linking the corresponding documents.
Participants can also communicate with each other not just by email and chat but via web sessions, for example team calls, screen sharing and much more
Furthermore, collaboration tools promote cooperation in teams and also boost interaction between the various units, such as other office locations, partner companies or clients.
Collaboration software is particularly useful when, for example, companies, locations or departments are working together on marketing products, offering services, working with external partners or developing solutions for various areas. Collaboration is based on the use of technical and organizational structures, (previously defined) workflows and other helpful tools, such as task management in a smart document management system (DMS) to ensure comprehensive information and communication flow. This may all seem familiar to you from your use of sharesuite. Thus the term “collaboration” should be understood as a holistic concept.
A concept that is based on well-structured software that offers the basic framework for independent project work using central data access, efficient reporting, for example by using a project diary, and other helpful tools. This should be used if workflows are to be made more efficient and transparent or if the team members are spread across different locations, since ideas can be collected, graphically displayed and structured in it. since ideas can be collected, graphically displayed and structured in it.
Fast data access through cloud-based DMS replaces unnecessary email correspondence, which is widely known to be a time sink. This kind of solution facilitates project collaboration, saves time and at the same time offers more flexibility.
The advantages of collaboration software
The main advantages are the modifications to communication channels, which also result in cost savings:
- Instant messaging replaces emails for urgent messages (real-time collaboration),
- telephone communications can take place through cheaper VoIP (Voice over IP), which is particularly advantageous when calling foreign offices.
- Digital conferences, also known as digital talks or video conferences, are a good alternative for keeping team members from around the world up to date.
The principle is to derive great advantages at little cost.
This digitalization step also saves a whole lot of time, with the advantages that brings:
- Faster work processes thanks to drag + drop templates, for example for repeat projectsor tasks
- File management for secure and effective file exchange (e.g. using sharesuite drive)
- It is easier and less time-consuming to create a taskthan to explain the task to a colleague by email.
- Emailscan be stored in the associated project or for contactsinstead of being forwarded to the respective employees.
- . Workflowscan be initiated more quickly, for example invoice payment, rather than forwarding it to the accounting department where the actual process is finally started.
- Likewise, a vacation request can be processed through collaboration software rather than by exchanging numerous emails back and forth with the manager.
- Simple and free onboarding of project participants, partners and customers
- Time recording for individual tasks, projects or resources
- Optimal access from mobile devices through apps
Summary of Functions
Collaboration software for project-based work helps to keep every team member up to date, to report developments and to plan resources better.
- Hourly bookings on tasks
- Time recording system
- Resource planning, utilization of employees and teams (resource management)
- Recurring processes
- Freely definable steps and inputs
- History and transparency
- Optimization of processes
- Project planning, control and processing
- Budget and cost controlling
- Availability of all information relating to a project
- Visualization of activities
- Reporting & analysis of data
- Interaction between the different systems
