Collaboration is the new mantra for businesses today. Organizations are realizing the importance of collaborating with their partners and suppliers to build a stronger, more expansive business creating value for both parties. In other words, collaboration is key to creating lasting value in any organization. However, not all collaboration tools are created equally some are vastly better than others.
Collaboration platforms that work best in a B2-B environment can feel rigid and difficult to use in a B2C context. However, if you collaborate with people outside of your company regularly, chances are you’ll find that there are some great collaboration tools out there. Even if you don’t yet have an established team or collaborative partner at your disposal, there are plenty of collaboration tools available today that will help you manage relationships with vendors and consultants as well as internal employees and suppliers. Here’s everything you need to know about some of the most effective Team Collaboration Software available today.
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What collaboration tools are best for?
When looking at a list of collaboration tools, you might be wondering which ones are best for your specific situation. After all, if you’re trying to manage your business relationships in a new way, you’ll need to identify what kind of collaboration tools will work best for your situation. There are quite a few factors that determine which collaboration tools are best for your business. For example, how many people are involved in your interactions with vendors and partners? How often do you need to communicate with external parties? What kind of business process do you have that you’d like to be able to automate? As you can see, it can be quite complicated to choose the right collaboration tools for your specific situation. However, once you know a bit more about your own needs, it’s much easier to identify which collaboration tools would work best for your business.
Google Docs is Great for Collaboration Within Your Company
Google Docs’ collaborative functionality is simple and intuitive. You can create multiple versions of an agreement or other legal-type documents, allowing co-authors to simultaneously edit the same document. Additionally, you can set up your team to manage and edit documents, with access controlled by user roles. For example, you might create a role for sales employees that has access to certain documents. Collaboration within your own company is easy with Google Docs, meaning you can work on projects together without needing to create a separate tool for sharing files.
Hang Out Meetings Are Great For Managing Vendor-Partner Relationships
Hang-out meetings have come a long way in recent years. When they were first introduced, they were criticized as being a way to artificially inflate sales metrics. However, they have become a valuable tool for managing relationships with vendors and other partners. Today, many vendors offer browser-based features that allow you to collaborate in real-time. For example, you and a salesperson can collaborate on a project while on the phone, and everyone sees the same collaborative document that you all edited. You can even see each other’s faces and gestures to ensure that each person feels like they’re “in the room” and collaborating.
Conclusion
Collaboration tool can help you achieve your business goals – from increasing collaboration within your team to strengthening relationships with clients and suppliers. But it’s important to understand the unique challenges and needs of each collaboration tool and find the one that works best for your specific situation.
