The COVID-19 has led organizations around the world to adopt remote working to decrease the community spread of the virus while limiting the impact on productivity.
In the age of social distancing, digital collaboration is the new normal in the workplace. With employees no longer required to work cut off from one another, this shift can drive improved efficiency and increased productivity – but only if you have the best online collaboration tools in place.
Your online collaboration software plans should be based on a platform for communication that is available not just on a desktop computer but also on mobile devices, such as cell phones. The idea is to let all employees keep in touch, at all times, through Unified Communications. This enhanced accessibility and ease of usage enable your people to communicate and collaborate better with each other, within their teams and across all departments. Such collaboration software also provide the perfect foundation to connect with external partners, customers, and vendors through more seamless, efficient, and high-impact communication.
To take this proposition even further, deadlines, task management, and support should all be built into communications. It is essential that the end-user the interface is designed to be clear, easy to understand, simple to use, and reduces misunderstanding. Every employee should be empowered to be able to speak to the right person, wherever they are in the company, to address a common problem and solve it within an acceptable workflow. Here are the trending platforms that are empowering modern-day employees to achieve all this, and more, in 2020:
- Slack is a smart collaboration tool that is available in both desktop and mobile versions. It allows teams to send direct messages to each other as individuals, as well as groups. You can organize conversations into various channels for specific initiatives or projects. The software also integrates with the best apps like Google Docs, Box, and Dropbox for a more unified experience.
- Nextiva brings all the features of traditional business phone systems to companies that work remotely or across multiple locations and time zones. Using just one robust online platform (and one service provider), you can deliver and manage reliable phone service to employees in multiple locations.
- GoToMeetingis a robust online meeting and video conferencing tool designed to enable businesses to collaborate with their teams, clients, customers, and other businesses in real-time via the Internet. It is particularly great for international teams and can greatly reduce the learning curve as it also supports screen sharing. Video conference platforms such as GoToMeeting are playing a major role in providing a more flexible work culture and a better life/work balance for employees. Virtual meetings have made working simpler by allowing face-to-face team discussions without the daily commute or the need to share a physical space.
- Microsoft Teams is a unified communications platform that merges workplace chat with video meetings, file storage, attachment, and app integration. Your teams can host web conferences on this platform, and communicate through audio, video, and chat – with both people from within and outside the organization.
- Most of us are familiar with Skype, an online collaboration tool that allows users to communicate with any other Skype user for free via instant messaging, voice, video, and screen sharing. More importantly, Skype supports conference calls for up to 25 people, which means it can be a very convenient way to bring your team together for a quick update on the project status.
- WeConference is a secure, cost-effective, and easy-to-implement on-demand video conferencing solution and service from ECTL (Enhanced Communication and Technologies (P) Ltd.). It offers a robust set of video conferencing and collaboration features on any device, anywhere. What’s more, it comes with advanced features such as AI-led transcription, video recording, conference summaries, and more. The solution also ensures the utmost user security and privacy by offering strong safety features such as one-time entrance codes, security PIN, conference lock, end-to-end encryption, and more. Further, it allows moderators to secure virtual conference rooms by using tools such as moderator-only access, one-time password and PIN, conference room lock, and user blocking.