Collaboration

Collaboration means many things – sharing information, learning, or working together to create new ideas or solve problems. Here are a few of the common collaboration scenarios that we see often:

• Collaboration through automated workflow. Workflow is a business process that requires action or input from two or more people. It can be as simple as requiring approval from a salesman, account manager, and vice president for each sales proposal, or as complex as coordinating multiple tasks from multiple departments and vendors when opening a new retail store.

  Problems arise when trying to coordinate tasks via email. A message might be lost in the in-box clutter or accidentally deleted. But the greatest problem with coordinating workflow via email is that management has no insight into workflow processes. Did Dave finish revising the proposal that has to go out tomorrow and send it to the engineering team for their approval? With email, the answer is “who knows?”

  The answer is an automated workflow software solution. Each individual can glance at his dashboard and see what tasks are waiting on him and when each task is due. By clicking on a link, each person can jump to a form where he enters his input, clicks a “Done” button, and a task is automatically created for the next person in the workflow. And the entire process is auditable. Managers can print a workflow task summary report that shows where projects are in the workflow, who has open tasks, and how long each task has been waiting for completion.

  If you have a repeatable process that you’re coordinating manually or via email, it could benefit from workflow automation.

• Collaboration through document management. "Where’s the latest version of the project plan? Are you sure that Jim hasn't made changes since he emailed this to you last week?"

  "I need to send the parts list to a customer, but Steve is out of the office and it’s on his PC."

  If you've ever asked questions like these, then you know the craziness that comes with sharing or updating documents via email or a shared network drive. When two or more people co-author a document and coordinate via email, people lose track of who has the latest version. Manually merging changes to a document because two people edited the latest version on their personal PCs is a special form of agony.

  The solution is one or more document libraries on your corporate intranet. Documents can be viewed by anyone with permissions to access the document. To control and track changes, documents are checked in and out for editing. A version history is kept, along with a record of who made each change.

• Collaboration through team sites. Team sites are smaller websites that live on your intranet that help a group of people share information about a project. Project sites allow groups of people to:

  • Share and collaboratively author documents.
  • Discuss topics in a message board.
  • Share a team calendar of important dates and deadlines.
  • Easily set up and conduct surveys.
  • Manage information in custom lists.

  Once set up, your company can create new team sites for new projects with the click of a button.

  If your company needs to take friction out of collaboration, give us a call. We’ll help you explore your options.