Article

Madelyn Wilson
Madelyn Wilson 28 September 2018

How Collaboration Technologies Can Result in High Business Performance

Businesses can ensure their employees work more productively through the use of CRM software.

In the age of technology, companies want their workforce to work smarter and faster with greater and greater productivity. In order to make their workforce as productive as possible, companies need collaborative technologies to transform the way organizations work. Using collaboration platforms in the workplace allows employees to work efficiently and effectively.

Collaboration Technologies  

In the past, workers who wanted to collaborate together on a project did it on paper, side by side. In the age of computers, people could collaborate on projects via computers, but that wasn’t much easier than sharing on paper, because you had to email the file you were working on to your co-worker, which meant that while your co-worker was working on it, you couldn’t see the changes, and you didn’t have access to the file, which meant a lot of wasted time and a decrease in productivity. Collaboration technologies have made sharing data in the workplace much faster and easier, which means that workers are able to work on a project simultaneously.

These new technologies in business work to make projects digitized, but they also work to embed technology into the workplace task by task. For example, an accounting firm can share knowledge quickly and effortlessly in a project collaboration, so that each worker is able to work more quickly and effectively. Increasingly, the work processes shared with workers through workflow platforms allows groups to create a standardized work plan, so that everyone knows what their task is, and how long they have to perform it. Platforms can even provide templates for the groups to work from. If the workflow program is completed in advance, employees can hand on the projects to another coworker, discuss how the work is going, update colleagues and get approval or feedback on the project. Executives and managers can also use workflow collaborations to determine where the weak spots are in the workflow and work to improve them. Collaboration technologies can result in amazing results, such as teams within an energy company working together to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and sales teams finishing a project in days rather than weeks.

Collaboration Technologies and Customer Relationship Management

Businesses who have begun using a customer relationship management system (CRM) find that the technology allows employees to manage customer connections and relationships. When technology is used to manage relationships, the performance and efficiency of the business grows, as well as the profitability of the company.CRM software with G-suite integration helps businesses to manage their connections with customers in many different ways. The application can help your business market your products and services directly to people who want or need them. The software can work to support your sales force through lead generation, and sales support, which helps your employees make more sales contracts with customers. One of the best reasons to have CRM software is in the customer relations and service area, because the technology exists that allows everyone to see past conversations with clients, client history, the status of a client order and past client activity, so that clients who call in or chat do not have to wait for an employee to get up to speed on what they might need.

Finally, CRM software allows businesses to see the performance of a business through the use of reports and other graphics. Owners and managers can look at the performance of a sales force, for example, and figure out which performance areas (or people) are producing stronger results than others. They can also see how performance can be improved to take the business to the next level.

Collaboration Technologies Can Improve Results-Driven Collaborative Behaviors

Business owners know that it is not enough to make collaboration technologies available. Instead, collaborative technologies must be part of an overall change in business culture and management style. If you want collaborative behaviors to continue, research into human behavior says you have to work for those behaviors by encouraging and incentivizing them. For example, one computing company that had introduced collaboration software, but wasn’t getting the results they wanted decided to make collaboration a game which would have winners and awards. A points system was established, so that team members could win points for task completion, answering questions or feedback on the company through the social network, or helping customers with any problems or complaints they had. The points were tied to rewards, which were not a balloon or a t-shirt, but instead were cash awards, gift cards and other fun awards that employees actually wanted to win. As a result of their game, the company saw their productivity rise by 20%.

Collaboration technologies can also help with outsourcing projects and using their talented employees most effectively. In addition, companies are beginning to realize that collaboration is vital, not only with people within the company but also from outside the company. Many companies collaborate with vendors outside the company, as well as contract employees that are performing work that is outsourced. In addition, its partners and other interested parties may all be working on the same large project. While this sounds crazy, collaboration across multiple areas has been very successful with large projects.

The notion of collaboration as a way to bring in talent from outside the company remains a promising future trend because sometimes, the greatest talent for a particular project is found outside the company. The company, through collaboration, is able to find talent, contract with talent, use the talent for a particular project and then release the contract talent after the job is completed. Research has indicated that this outsourcing and collaboration leads to greater productivity and a reduction in the amount of time used on a project.

There is no longer a question of whether or not a business can afford to collaborate in its business operations, but instead, the question is in reality why the business hasn’t put in place the collaboration software into its business plan. If the business is going to be successful in the future, it must collaborate in the present. 

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