Increasing productivity in enterprises via effective collaboration.

One of the core objectives of any organisation is to increase productivity.

Improved productivity increases the overall profitability of a company and return on investment when it comes to optimising the utilisation of employee resources and business solutions.

Can you think of a single company that does not have the desire to increase productivity?

Nope, none that I can think of.

There are a number of ways that individuals can increase productivity. (Take a break when needed, set a timer for each task, eliminate distractions, love what you do, complete the difficult tasks first, keep a notebook and pen on hand at all times to write down your to-dos and ideas, plan ahead, organise your office, use project management tools… the list goes on…. Likehack.org

Interestingly, collaboration plays a more important role in productivity than expected.

With the increase of Collaboration solutions, enterprises’ ability to share information across teams, locations and personal devices has been significantly improved. Add to that, the ease of bringing people together (to create and work towards shared outcomes results in increased innovation, expertise and harnesses the power of working together to achieve the best outcome in the most productive way).

With the correct collaboration solutions, organisations have the potential to change the way they work forever. An effective collaboration tool can change the way organisations communicate and engage with remote workers, dispersed teams, external suppliers, prospective customers and even customers.

For example, take the ability to co-create and co-edit content that forms part of a bigger idea or project. The fact that you can come together with peers, work live through changes on content, chat at the same time, removes the need for unnecessary follow up calls and meetings or emails promising to review. This in turn encourages flexible working, improved morale and increases innovation through the means of shared ideas and creative discussions across many skillsets.

Let’s a take a real world example….

A large global construction company with a multi-site complex supply chain and various silos across the world may experience an issue with one of their sites overseas. This issue causes a problem in production, which has potential to destroy a major project. The issue needs discussed and solved by various global stakeholders across many departments and site locations. Without an effective collaboration tool this company relies on email and phone calls. Photos of the site issue are taken and sent by email, then a phone call is set up and each key stakeholder gets onto the call, looks at the photos and gives their feedback during the phone call. After the phone call they still need to back up their conversations by email and additional feedback and thoughts can take up to or over 10 days to reach a final, shared outcome together.

With an effective collaboration tool this company can see huge reductions in the turnaround time on this specific site issue. Instead of wasting time with email comms and scheduled phone calls, the key stakeholders can come together in real time, give their feedback via group voice and video calls or even using instant messages which are saved for the group to see in context. They can upload all images / content to the platform and use annotation to give instant feedback on these images together. They can also make use of white boarding to brainstorm ideas visually and agree to give sign off on a final shared solution together during one or two collaboration sessions. Using this example a 10 day turnaround could be reduced to less than 2 days.

As well as reducing turnaround times and increasing efficiency, the potential travel costs are also significantly reduced. Think about it, if you can visually see, contribute and work together on a task to solve a problem in your office in Asia from your UK desk, without the time and cost of travel, you would definitely choose this option… I know I would!

Without question, the use of an effective collaboration solution across any enterprise organisation can result in significant benefits to not only productivity but to innovation, employee engagement and communication.

The ability to work together in a more efficient and effective way is not a new concept by any means but is very much at the forefront of many organisations, especially large enterprises with distributed teams and sites across the world.

An effective collaboration solution will help these organisations to Connect, Communicate and Collaborate across any location, department, meeting space, team and device, increasing productivity, innovation, return on investment and the overall engagement of employees.

Next steps

You may also be interested in our recent blog post on Top 5 Steps to Improving your Team’s Collaboration.

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