What is Social Collaboration Software?

by admin on November 22, 2010

Traditional Business Collaboration Tools

Business collaboration allows teams to share knowledge and communicate despite geographical barriers. The most popular, and traditional, forms of business collaboration occur through e-mail, online forums, wikis and blogs. These tools help team members better communicate with other members of the organization, as well as external members (vendors, customers, partners) that are located outside of the corporate firewall, but that still need to be kept in the loop with certain business projects.

Move Towards Social Collaboration

As the majority of individuals become accustomed to “social” networking and sharing, they become increasingly used to the instantaneous receiving and sharing of knowledge, thoughts and news. This instant gratification of knowledge then trickles into the business world, where colleagues, vendors, partners and customers now expect the same, instant updates and collaboration in their business relationships.

Instead of running away from “social”, which some companies do for fear that “social” immediately translates to “distractions”, smart companies are embracing social as a way to work better, smarter and faster. Social collaboration software platforms – task, project, document, team and client management – faciliate the social sharing and communicating between people towards accomplishing a common business goal. Social collaboration is about interacting, sharing information and collaborating while working towards a common business goal – as opposed to social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn that facilitate social interaction but not necessarily for business.

Projects can be completed at a higher rate of success when the customer is being kept in the loop and constantly giving his or her feedback and thoughts. Tribal knowledge increases when colleagues are constantly sharing the industry’s latest news, rather than silo-ing the information for themselves. And by adding social, even the most highly distributed team can feel connected and stay on the same page, regardless of geographical separation and location.

Gartner’s Predictions for Social Software in 2011

  1. Social networking will overtake e-mail communications for at least 20 percent of business users by 2014.
  2. By 2012, half of enterprise businesses will use microblogging tools integrated into activity streams, rather than through stand alone applications.
  3. Only a fourth of enterprise businesses will fully harness and utilize the data they receive from social networks towards improving their operational productivity and performance.

Benefits of Increased Social Collaboration

  • Teams can share knowledge faster
  • Strengthened business relationships with customers, partners, vendors with increased communication, transparency and trust
  • Improved productivity and efficiency with one centralized knowledge base, and place to share and collaborate on documents and projects.
  • Better and faster innovation and performance – Fast SaaS applications allow teams to be agile, communicate and respond to business partner requests instantaneously

{ 1 comment }

Online Collaboration Software for Marketing Agencies

by admin on October 13, 2010

Why Do Marketing Agencies Need Online Collaboration?

Marketing agencies typically work with a large number of clients at any given time, which can lead to an operational and organizational nightmare without the proper tools in place. Good communication, organization and project management are key to any marketing agency’s success.

Online Collaboration Software

More and more marketing agencies are turning to online collaboration tools to help them speed up their day to day activities. The benefits of an online solution (Software-as-a-Service) are that they are turnkey solutions that require barely any initial costs, are highly scalable, require little to no hardware maintenance and have a quick time to value. Online collaboration tools include task management, project management, client management and team communication tools. Task management tools such as online tasklists and online calendars allow marketing team members to stay on top of what needs to be completed for each client. Project management tools such as milestones and project reporting help marketing agencies quickly assess the status of each marketing campaign and print out professional reports for clients in minutes. Client management tools include powerful online databases that allow you to capture and record your client’s important data. Databases can also be set up to vet the advertising process and keep track of all your advertising/marketing channels. And finally, team collaboration tools allow your internal team members to communite with one another, despite being geographically separated. RSS activity feeds, status updates and e-mail digests let everyone on your team know what you’re working on and what has been completed. Team collaboration tools also allow you to work from out of the office, so members that are working from home are still able to log in, collaborate on files and complete projects from wherever they are.

The benefits of online collaboration tools for marketing teams are:

  1. Improved team communication – Geographically dispersed teams and clients can now communicate and collaborate anywhere, at anytime.
  2. Collaborative document creation – Collaborate on presentations, proposals, brochures, press releases and other  marketing materials without having to send endless e-mails back and forth. Use the online document library to upload, share, collaborate and finalize documents.
  3. Track metrics – Use online spreadsheets to track campaign data, and create project reports that track budgets, web traffic and marketing expenses.
  4. Meet deadlines and manage meetings – Use online calendars and task lists to manage client to dos, meetings, project deadlines and events.
  5. Foster innovation – Get everyone on your team sharing their best ideas with discussion forums, blogs, discussion threads and wikis.
  6. Organize projects and documents – Organize all of your files by client. Create tags and folder groups for easy file retrieval and use.

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries