Run your business more effectively: Tip#4
The Importance of Collaboration
Did you know that more than two-thirds of chief information officers (CIOs) from top-performing companies see in-house collaboration and communication as the means to innovation, according to a report by IBM?
Proficient collaboration is perilous to every company’s success, SMBs and multinational corporations alike.
On the other hand, industry analyst firm IDC estimates that inefficient collaboration accounts for an average loss of 21.3 percent in an organization’s total productivity each year!
We’re sure you understand how hard efficient collaboration is to achieve.
We talk a lot about remote employees who travel or work from home. It isn’t hard to see why these types of employees find it harder to collaborate with their colleagues. But, don’t forget about your average (in office) employees who spend more than half of their time at work reading and replying to email, searching for information and scheduling meetings. There is hardly time for collaboration, not to mention doing it efficiently.
Meanwhile, collaborating with partners, suppliers, and others outside your small business poses many of the same difficulties as collaborating internally.
Mobile and cloud solutions provide a secure place for coworkers to store and share information, and with Office 365, that data is easily accessible across all of your devices. Utilizing these features eliminates many of the collaboration challenges that have a negative effect on efficiency and productivity. Not to mention, the time and money saved, for instance, by setting up video conferences for employees in different locations to meet face-to-face and view the same documents rather than having to travel to meetings in person.