Since the inception of content collaboration, there have been a lot of different platforms created. Knowing what makes a good platform (and choosing a good one) is key to running your business well. Here are a few things to consider when choosing a collaboration platform.
Organization
One of the biggest benefits to having a collaboration platform is the ability to organize projects and tasks in a wide variety of ways. Organization is vital to running your team efficiently, and having one space that houses everything in an organized way is a must.
Instead of having a dozen different apps or systems that your team members use to share different files, using a collaboration platform puts that all in one place. Clicking between apps or windows kills efficiency and is really distracting, especially if you have to remember what parts of each project is in which app.
Conversation
A team that talks together, works well together, or at least that’s kind of how the saying goes. Regardless, it’s critical that team members talk to each other to accomplish day to day tasks, and communicate progress and updates back to upper management. For some businesses, teams can be spread across continents or on opposite sides of the world. In these cases, meetings in the office aren’t going to cut it to keep things running smoothly.
Workplace communication is so important and content collaboration platforms give your teams the ability to talk and work on the go. Since content collaboration platforms are cloud based, they work well on desktop computers and mobile devices, which allows for a smooth transition between working at home, the office, or anywhere there’s an internet connection.
A good collaboration platform should support real-time conversations and should also be a place where team members can share files directly and receive feedback instantly, and assign tasks within the collaboration platform.
Collaboration platforms use real-time conversations for several reasons. One of the biggest reasons instant messages are so popular and effective is that they’re read and responded to much more quickly than emails. In addition to quicker communication, it’s easier to track the flow of a conversation between groups and individuals. This makes it harder for things to go unnoticed or unassigned. Tasks assigned through the collaboration platform can be traced back to when the task was created, who it was assigned to, and anything else pertaining to the task.
Education
Having everything all in one place allows team members to work quickly on different tasks, experiment on unique ideas, and learn from mistakes as the work moves forward. Content collaboration platforms store previous messages and projects, enabling employees to review previous tasks and integrate lessons learned into their future work.
Evaluation
Good content collaboration allows for immediate feedback on work shared between team members. Projects that require quick turnaround time get the attention they need quickly because of how easy they can be downloaded or previewed.
Content collaboration platforms also make it easy to evaluate team members and hold them accountable for individual assignments. Since tasks can be assigned directly from the platform, you can track any assignment back to when it was created and make sure that nothing gets lost.
Collaboration
Sending large files is another critical component of a good content collaboration platform. Because emails can only hold so much, companies needed a better way to send hi-res images, large video files, or even large text documents.
Content collaboration platforms allow the ability to quickly upload large files, send those files, and have others within the project view the project file within the cloud, instead of having to download the file, view and edit, save changes, and re-upload it to the cloud. Some collaboration platforms even allow for viewing a high-resolution preview of the file, instead of needing to download the file to view it.
It’s no surprise that more and more businesses are turning toward content collaboration platforms as a way to help solve problems their workplace faces. Teams run more effectively, work isn’t lost in the shuffle of apps or emails, feedback can be provided immediately, and everything your team needs is all in the same place.
If your team hasn’t made the transition to a content collaboration platform, or if your current collaboration platform has left you wanting more, check out our website and let us show you how OpenText Hightail does content collaboration.
