How Collaboration Aids Your Digital Transformation

As digital transformation rocks organizations across all industries, business leaders are constantly looking at ways to improve their business and bottom line.

For many, this means looking inward at internal processes and policies to discover how to operate more efficiently and improve productivity. The effective adoption of team Collaboration tools allows businesses to do just that.

“New collaboration technologies do more than just digitize old ways of doing things; they make new ways of doing things possible.” – Accenture

According to Smartsheet’s 2017 Enterprise Collaboration Report, over 80% of IT decision makers say that collaboration apps are used across their company, with seven out of 10 indicating that they have a top-down strategy in place for those tools.

Additionally, more than 50% of these respondents said that their company used at least six different collaboration tools for business, with 16% indicating that they actually used more than 10 different tools.

But just how does Collaboration Software improve productivity in the workplace?

Break Down Company Silos

As a decision-maker on the cutting edge of innovation, you’ve heard about the evils of siloed workplaces.

Your company operates in silos if different departments work in isolation from one another. This means that there is limited to no sharing of information, goals, priorities, or processes with one another. This type of structure limits your employees and can prevent best business outcomes.

The benefits of breaking down company silos include:

• Eliminating redundancies – Employees across departments can share information to prevent situations where the same work is being done twice.
• Discovering best practices – If you find that some departments operate more efficiently than others, collaboration can share those best practices.
• Improving engagement – Ideas come in all shapes and forms. By breaking down silos, employees can bring new perspectives to projects in need of a boost.

How Collaboration Software Removes Silos

Connecting different departments and teams together in order to make everyone involved more efficient is the basis behind workstream collaboration apps.

Communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams can boost employee morale and collaboration by simply connecting different people with one another. Meanwhile, CRM tools from companies like Salesforce can bridge gaps between sales and support teams.

The key is to adopt team collaboration tools that can be used by multiple groups of people; otherwise, you are just further siloing each department by equipping them with different tools.

Learn How Workstream Collaboration Tools Like Microsoft Teams Can Improve Productivity

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Connect Remote Workers

According to the New York Times, roughly 50% of workers in the U.S. work remotely in some capacity. With more and more days out of the office, team collaboration tools are absolutely necessary to not only keep employees connected but also allow them to experience company culture.

As mentioned, communication platforms such as Slack or Microsoft Teams immediately equip team members with all forms of communication – i.e. messaging and video – regardless of where they are in the world.

“We need to connect everyone in order to innovate. We want to be very diverse. There is an unwritten rule that the more diverse we are, the more chances we have to innovate.” – Global Innovation Lead, Fortune 500 company as reported by Deloitte

This doesn’t just enhance communication. Remote workers report higher job satisfaction and better work-life balance, which in turn leads to more engaged and productive employees during work hours.

In fact, Deloitte reports that workers, in general, were 17% more satisfied with their workplace culture as a whole when they had access to effective collaboration tools.

Elevate Workflows

Workstream collaboration Software emphasizes transparency in all aspects of the business. This isn’t limited to employee functions, but also client and end-user facing functions.

With collaboration apps, the details of a project are available so that no employee is working in the dark, unaware of how their hard work is impacting the business. The same goes for organizations showcasing work to clients – client relations can be improved with increased transparency.

Workflow benefits from workstream collaboration software include:

• Automation – Previous tasks that may have taken precious hours of each workday can be cut down to minutes with automation via collaboration software.
• Troubleshooting – Similar to automation, tasks that may have taken hours and a ticket to IT in order to troubleshoot, can be solved in minutes.
• Crisis Solving – Roadblocks can be overcome with increased visibility and communication into projects. Team members who run into problems can call upon their coworkers for aid with ease.

(Source: Smartsheet 2017 Enterprise Collaboration Report)

However, as noted above, workstream collaboration adoption can be tricky if each department takes it upon themselves. And the reality is, this is more often the case than not.

According to the same report, only 9% believe that there is a very effective infrastructure for sharing and collaboration in place. An additional 39% do believe that infrastructure to be at least somewhat effective, however.

Workflows are just beginning to be disrupted. With the advent of voice and virtual assistants like Cortana and Google Assistant, how employees do their jobs will change once again. By adopting collaborating software now, you are preparing your business for future disruption.

Unify Square’s services and software support Teams to ensure the rollout of your workstream collaboration software is achieving the desired results and business objectives as expected. Contact us today to learn how Unify Square can help.

Improve Engagement to Drive ROI

Ultimately, by adopting collaboration software that improves productivity, decision leaders aim to improve overall ROI. After all, adopting technology for the sake of it only to remain stagnant or even take a step back, is the antithesis to digital transformation.

Consider this statistic: Deloitte indicates that improved employee engagement can be worth about 20% of the operating income of large enterprises. That means that adopting software that improves employee engagement can be a relatively easy win for your bottom line.

On top of that, consider another piece of research out of Australia. Deloitte discovered that the Australian economy will lose about $9.3 billion in value if it doesn’t begin adopting collaboration-type technologies in the workplace.

Even more, only one out of five businesses without collaboration strategies outgrew the market, compared to 30% with a middling strategy and 52% with an important strategy.

Avoid the Pitfalls of Collaboration Software Adoption

Avoiding the Downsides of Rapid Adoption

If you are ready to adopt, a cohesive strategy is vital for successful implementation.

You do not want to add these pieces of collaboration only to break systems and create worse communication silos.

Cohesive adoption strategies can aid in getting everyone involved in an efficient manner. While users of younger generations may be more familiar with this type of technology, older users may be unfamiliar and unwilling to change from systems that have been their bread and butter for years.

But with successful adoption of collaboration software, you place your organization on the path to success. To learn more reach out to our experts today.

The post The 4 Ways Collaboration Software Improves Productivity in the Workplace appeared first on Unify Square.