An organization is just as good as its skilled, collaborating employees. Everyone in an organization is an asset that needs to be utilized to its best capabilities, which only shall bring the true return on the investment gone into building an army of professionals.
Organizations have lived for long under the fear of exposing themselves to potential threats with collaboration. But collaboration cannot be ignored any longer, as it will leave them in a grey, vulnerable situation of incompetency. If the remotely sitting teams fail to collaborate, discuss, make presentations to each other for a rounded decision than your initiatives will always struggle to succeed at every step.
If people in your organization are unable to come together for work, they struggle between the different versions of documents, unable to locate files, these signs at workplace are a call for help:
Collaborating with the Overseas Team is a Challenge: And why just overseas? Collaborating beyond the firewall protection will be challenging and difficult if you are not running on an extremely supportive collaboration tool. While firewalls are crucial, they shouldn’t get restrictive by getting into the way of a clear communication. If this is hampering your progress, then the reason is a lack of collaboration tool.
Best way to avert the insecurities that email brings is to opt for a collaboration medium that can support internal sharing of documents, without the need of sharing any document over the mail. SharePoint is one such platform.
Facing Cases of Breaches: This can take a bigger form, if not addressed urgently. No organization can survive breach scenarios, losing business and finances. Besides, restricting collaboration is not a choice, as that in itself means restricting possibilities. This constant tug of war between risk and restriction is where you need a SharePoint solution. In such a scenario you need a powerful collaboration platform to secure your communication.
Versioning of Documents Between Approvals: Back and forth of documents for approval generates multiple versions of documents. And later in time when you will really need it, it will be hard to spot the latest version. Again a restrictive way of working pulling you back, causing frustration at workplace. Working over the entire document can go in vain, if you send across the wrong version. This is a part of collaborative weakness that your organization is suffering from.
Inability to Display Data in an Interactive Way: There are complex data and scenarios that need to be discussed. But how will you display them in a video call or a meeting? This involves collaboration capabilities to enable display in charts, graphs, images, and more. If this is a challenge for your organization, then this needs your urgent attention.
SharePoint can infuse these capabilities in your team, such as, with the help of web apps by QuickApps you can swiftly create chart flows, tables, and graphs. These web apps will help you evolve your SharePoint abilities.
It is a good idea to hire resources overseas, to control costs. But it takes a good collaboration tool to communicate work, discuss challenges, and build a solution together. If you come cross these signs, take these as a shout for help.
Associate Director – Product Development
Amit Gupta plays a key role in incubating and establishing best SharePoint practices at AgreeYa. He is closely associated with the Product Development and Delivery team and works to find new solutions based on Microsoft technology and optimize performance and responsiveness for our clients. He can be reached at amit.g@agreeya.com