The level of collaboration within an organisation has a direct impact on the outcome of any given project or task. The wave of collaborative technologies that are entering the workplace promise to bring myriad business benefits. Collaboration technologies go beyond mere communication between workers, they actually create new ways that tasks and projects can be done.
When a team or department is collaborating effectively, and sharing insights and information, communicating freely and seamlessly, they can function at a better level. Organisations need their workforces to perform faster, more productively and smarter than ever before, and in order to achieve that, they need to harness the power of collaborative technologies into all processes, making them part of the corporate culture. This is how businesses can turn knowledge into action, and improve decision making.
Businesses that foster high levels of collaboration ensure that all staff, whether at the office, on the road, or situated at a satellite office, can reap the benefits of real-time information and ongoing communication. For businesses, this means benefits derived from the expertise of all staff, irrespective of their location.
Collaboration technologies are making new ways of doing things a reality, but adopting technologies is only beneficial if they go and in hand with changes to the way work is done. Equally important is having the technology accompanied by business process innovations.
Collaboration technologies intensify employees’ ability to interact with each other, or with a multitude of people at the same time. They promise to better the way we generate, capture and share information, shifting the way we interact with our colleagues, find outside knowledge where needed, and share expertise and observations more freely.
This is particularly true for the younger and more tech-savvy millennials as they are more likely to gravitate toward collaboration technologies, because technology is already completely integral to the way they live their lives. These workers are particularly supportive of new ways to improve productivity, adopting instant messaging (IM) and tools such as Skype to collaborate among their colleagues.
Collaboration is testing the boundaries of human productive capacity. Being able to work together beyond the limits of small groups is boosting output and innovation. Today’s collaboration technologies have the ability to foster a very different level of business performance, and herald a new type of effective, high-functioning business.
