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American entrepreneur and industrialist Henry Ford once famously remarked, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” This quest for collective success is what forms the basis of a collaboration platform.
Businesses of all sizes are increasingly reaching out to global audiences, which requires them to focus on enterprise collaboration. They have to work with employees, partners, and customers spread across the globe. With traditional collaboration methods such as email, it’s difficult to control the various versions of files or documents shared with multiple stakeholders across time zones.
That’s where collaboration tools can help. A collaboration tool offers features that allow multiple stakeholders to combine their knowledge and skills to achieve a common goal without having to be together in the same place.
This guide can help potential buyers find the best team collaboration software for their needs.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
What is collaboration software?
Common functionality of collaboration software
Benefits of collaboration software
What type of buyer are you?
Market trends to understand
Collaboration software is a type of software tool that lets multiple users communicate, collaborate, and coordinate among themselves in real time.
A collaboration platform facilitates team communication through emails, instant messages, voice and video calls, and discussion threads. It also helps with online collaboration via file sharing and document management. These features allow an entire team to work simultaneously on the same file, which gets updated in real time.
All types of organizations can benefit from collaboration software, including those in:
Screen sharing during a video conference in GoToMeeting (Source)
Most collaboration tools come with some or all of the following capabilities:
Content management | Allows collaboration between several authors to create and edit the same document in real time. Enables users to highlight text or add comments, which can be incorporated when editing. Some solutions also allow users to organize and structure content according to the document type. |
Document management | Enables users to upload and share files such as documents, videos, and images. Also allows users to store, track, and manage different versions of a document and apply role-based permissions to disable access to specific sections of a document. |
Calendar management | Users can view individual and team-wide calendars to schedule appointments or meetings on the calendars of team members they are working with, irrespective of their locations. This feature may also include synchronization with third-party calendar management applications (e.g., Apple's Calendar, Google Calendar). |
Knowledge management | Allows users to maintain a repository of all available resources (documents, files, etc.) related to completed and ongoing projects in their organization. This process facilitates knowledge sharing within an organization. |
Communication software | Provides communication tools that allow users to engage with other project members. These tools include internal messengers, video conferencing, discussion forums, and team-specific group creation capabilities. Some solutions also allow for the creation of an internal social network with the capability to build individual and team bios, so users can like and comment on project updates. |
Project management | Enables the tracking of project progress by breaking projects into several tasks and setting completion milestones for each. This allows managers to assign tasks, track project dependencies, set timelines for tasks or projects, and reschedule tasks according to team schedules. Certain solutions provide Gantt chart representation to visualize project completion timelines. |
Third-party integration | Most of the collaboration tools on the market are “best-of-breed,” focusing on a specific group of features. However, some organizations may seek software that can manage their core tasks as well as integrate with the other software tools they use, such as email software, instant messaging app, VoIP software, video conferencing software, and project management software. |
Businesses can reap multiple benefits from a collaboration tool, including:
Choosing the right collaboration software depends on the size of your business. Consider the following buyer types:
Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.