4 Ways Collaboration Tools Boost Team Performance

April 26, 2021 - 5 min read

Emily Bonnie

Distance is no longer a barrier to collaboration. Online collaboration tools make it possible for us to work with colleagues thousands of miles away. They enable us to be more mobile, accessing project information wherever and whenever the need arises.

But the same problems that hamper collaboration in our physical workspaces have followed us online. Communications that used to get lost in a pile of papers now get buried in our inboxes; important data that disappeared into a dusty file cabinet is now lost in chaotic folder hierarchies and duplicated in multiple versions. Miscommunication still occurs, feedback and assignments still get lost in the shuffle, and we’re still crunching numbers and updating spreadsheets to glean meaningful insights from work data. Collaboration tools offer a solution that lets your team take advantage of the real-time benefits of online collaboration, while side stepping the disorder that comes with working via email, spreadsheets, and instant messaging. So what are some ways you can improve your team's performance with a collaboration tool?

1. Improve quality

Working alone means you work with one set of ideas — your own. By collaborating, you can build on the collective abilities of your team to create the best idea, or test a few different plans to find the optimal solution. Collaboration tools give you a designated place to "brain dump": everyone involved in a project can list their proposals without being talked over (as is often the case during ideation meetings), while still being inspired by their teammates' ideas and discussions. Once the team reviews the full list of creative possibilities, they can start working right away to turn the chosen idea into reality. No thoughts get lost in inboxes, and no quiet voices are accidentally ignored.

2. Increase velocity

Collaboration software brings every resource, every idea, and every person into one collective space. Your team won't have to waste time searching emails for important attachments, waiting for status updates or approvals, or chasing down a colleague for help. Every piece of the project, from the initial idea to the final release, can be created and completed in one place and accessed round-the-clock, so people can connect to work information wherever they need to, or whenever a new idea strikes them. Your team can collaborate how, when, and where they want, without waiting for regular business hours or the next in-person meeting to move forward.

3. Reinforce accountability

If you've studied high-performance teams, you know that public accountability is a trump card in the game of project progress. People are 33% more likely to accomplish a goal when they write it down and tell others they are working on it. Collaboration tools give your team members a way to publicly commit to their tasks and goals, so they can share their progress, ask for assistance, and complete projects with full transparency. Plus, when everyone on your team knows not only what they're accountable for, but also what their teammates are accountable for, the waste of duplicated work disappears.

4. Spark innovation

It still holds true: two minds are better than one. When a collaboration tool allows you to look around and discover the new projects your colleagues are working on, that insight can spark innovative ideas for current or future projects. "I see that Lucy is working on our new feature.... Wait, what if we spun that in a different direction? I'll suggest it." Collaboration tools give people access to information that can fuel creativity on a daily basis, instead of limiting those breakthrough "A-ha!" moments to weekly update meetings or accidental watercooler conversations.

Collaboration tools also free ideas from the limitations of organizational hierarchy. Company-wide visibility means new ideas and initiatives can come from any employee, not just the executives. Proposals that may have been buried, or never formally submitted to begin with, are now circulating freely to grow and attract notice based on merit, not on limited access to decision makers.

Your team is your greatest resource

Ultimately, your greatest resource is your team. By providing tools that help them collaborate with less stress and greater efficiency, you’re enabling them to focus on the results of their efforts — instead of getting mired in the process. After all, a good collaboration tool smooths the flow of work for everyone. It reduces the number of lost files, facilitates the ideation process, and cuts down on time spent waiting for feedback or instruction. Most importantly, it helps their ideas get noticed, so your team can fulfill its full potential.

Emily Bonnie

Emily is a former Content Marketer of Wrike. She specializes in leadership, collaboration, and productivity. Her brain is stuffed with obscure grammar rules, an embarrassing amount of Star Wars trivia, and her grandmother’s pie recipes.

#Team Collaboration #Tools & Software Advice

Collaboration 3 min read

3 Collaboration Tips for Enhancing Teamwork

We talk a lot about collaboration here at Wrike. Partly because it's our favorite topic and we wouldn't be able to function as a company without it. But also because trends continue to point toward more remote collaboration in the future. It's part and parcel of everyday work and it will continue to be so. Which made us think: for the companies that are struggling to implement a culture of collaboration, what are three easy hacks that could make it happen? Here's what we determined: 1. Make Space for Collaboration Whether you're talking about cubicles and areas where your colleagues physically work or the virtual spaces created with cloud services and instant messaging, there must be a way to create inviting spaces for people to meet and work together. For example, Zappos designed its new HQ in Las Vegas so that workers can easily move to a new workspace. Data and power cables dangle from the ceilings so you can plug in anywhere, and common areas are abundant so that you're bound to come into contact with people you wouldn't ordinarily bump into. And what about remote teams? Companies like Shutterstock have made room for collaboration with the extreme practice of always-on video conferencing, where remote workers are part of a Google Hangout for 8 hours a day, allowing them to speak as if they were all in the same room. This way, even remote workers get a chance to build a sense of camaraderie with the other team members. And they can instantly turn to one another for information or assistance by turning to their video conference screen. 2. Push Tools for Sharing Making shared spaces is impossible without the right tools. We suggest these three or four tools to make collaboration a reality: — Realtime messaging tool: Think Skype, Google Hangouts, and Facetime. Something that allows people to talk and video chat with a remote colleague in real time. — Task management tool: Think Wrike (of course). Something that makes teamwork efficient, allows for assigning and organizing tasks, and eliminates the need for back-and-forth emails or IMs regarding work. — Knowledge base tool: Think internal blogs or wikis (and Wrike can do this very well too). Something that allows processes to be documented or expertise/best practices to be shared with the team. — File sharing tool: Think Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Something that allows you to easily save, sync, and share files with the team. (If you use Wrike, you'll be able to easily attach these to tasks.) 3. Trick the Body into Participating People are more attentive at meetings when standing versus sitting (especially if they don't have their laptops). There's also much more participation when the team is discussing problems around a whiteboard as opposed to watching someone present onstage in a large auditorium. When issues and diagrams illuminating unsolved problems are posted on whiteboards lining the hallways — or in internal blogs and wikis — you're more likely to see other solutions volunteered by people outside of the core team. Whatever your meeting or discussion may be about, prime the team for participation by encouraging a more active posture, and getting in the way of boredom, complacency, and silos. What are your best collaboration tips? I'm curious what hacks you've used to get teams collaborating or even participating proactively in a meeting. Hit the comments and share! READ NEXT: 5 Mistakes Marketing Teams Make with Collaboration Where Collaboration is Heading in 2015: Top 4 Trends to Watch 4 Strategies for Dealing With Difficult Stakeholders

Collaboration 5 min read

Top 3 Trends Shaping Project Collaboration

Collaboration remains a hot topic because it still works. In fact our CEO recently wrote a guest post on Inc.com stating that collective wisdom, crowdsourcing, and project collaboration are essential for the growth of a business or movement today — they should be integral parts of every company's DNA in order to survive and thrive. If you look at the factors that enable collaboration to occur on a massive scale, you’ll see three main trends shaping project collaboration and driving the adoption of new tools in many organizations. Let’s take a look at these trends one by one: Trend 1: Remote Work is Rapidly Spreading Today, the fact that I can easily decide to work from home as needed is a huge change for me. Ten years ago, that would’ve been impossible with the companies I was working for and with the technology available to me. But you don't need to look back that far to notice how the times have changed. Wrike recently surveyed over 1,000 employees and discovered that 43% of them currently spend more time working remotely than they did 2-3 years ago. Moreover, 80% of respondents now deal with remote workers on a daily basis, either working with distributed colleagues, or as remote workers themselves. These figures show remote collaboration growing and infiltrating the workplace at an impressive pace. And this growth isn't exclusive to specific industries or organization sizes, either. It's becoming more and more common for every kind of business to have people collaborating across multiple locations. Trend 2: Accidental Project Managers are Multiplying Then there is the rise of the “accidental project manager” — those who must take on a project management role out of necessity. They usually lack any formal certification in PM, or may be new to established PM methodologies and practices. According to our survey on remote collaboration, 70% of accidental project managers have no special training or certificate when they take on the role. Which means, there are entire groups of people tasked with project success who may not have time for formal training. Therefore, they need to do several things quickly to hit the ground running, such as: find educational resources to their increase knowledge, adopt a more collaborative environment in order to learn from colleagues, and find the most efficient tools and technology to support that collaboration. Which brings us to cloud services... Trend 3: Collaboration is Increasingly Done via Cloud Collaboration Tools Remote teams battle challenges that co-located colleagues typically don’t have to worry about. Such challenges include inefficient coordination, reduced visibility into one another’s work, and, as a group, the inability to maintain high velocity. To combat these obstacles, the online services industry — A.K.A. cloud collaboration services — has boomed, allowing teams with remote members to continue working together efficiently. Instead of storing files in network drives that would require VPN access for remote workers, file storage services such as Dropbox or Box can be used securely. In place of lobbing different versions of a Microsoft Word document back and forth through email, Google Drive can be used. Then there are communication tools like Skype and Google Hangouts to facilitate meetings, as well as work management tools like Wrike enterprise collaboration software that help teams delegate tasks and coordinate projects both large and small. Cost-effective technology now exists that enables remote collaboration without breaking the bank. In fact, these tools are often free in their simplest versions, with tiered pricing based on an organization’s needs. Now Build a Better Team Understanding these three growing trends can help you better understand the landscape in which collaboration occurs so you can enhance the way your own organization collaborates. Now it’s your turn. What factors affect how you presently collaborate with your team? Hit the comments and share.

Collaboration 5 min read

How to Convince Your Boss You Need Better Collaboration Tools

You're reached that point where email and spreadsheets just don’t cut it anymore — that point when the lost attachments and noisy communication of email, as well as the need for constant manual updates on spreadsheets, have moved from being useful to being inefficient. You’re convinced that your team would benefit from proper collaboration tools, but how do you convince your boss? You need more than a list of cool features that you can’t live without. You need justification for serious investment, with points that can be presented to higher management and maybe even executives. You need to prepare a case for how your current tools are stealing resources (think: time and money) from your organization’s bottom line, and keeping it from achieving high level business objectives at a faster pace. Here are three benefits to point out to management when you need to convince them that your team needs more efficient collaboration tools: Prove: Email/Spreadsheets aren't Efficient Collaboration Tools If you’re not using a project management software or collaboration tool, then you’re probably coordinating projects via emails, spreadsheets, phone calls, and face-to-face meetings. While each of these are useful, none of them are robust enough to efficiently manage deadlines, complex to-do lists, collaborative feedback, and team member workloads. Action:Craft an argument around how formal collaboration tools can reduce the inefficiency of your current system. You can reference studies on how time is wasted when searching through emails, or when there are too many meetings (see Salary.com's 2014 Wasting Time at Work Survey). Look for stats about how much time workers spend interacting with email (28% of their work week, according to McKinsey Global Institute). Delve into your current struggles with emails that don't provide proper context (which project is this about?), and miscommunications stemming from email threads where multiple people weigh in at the same time, often with conflicting instructions. Cite specific instances when one of your projects broke down due to an email or spreadsheet error. Demonstrate: How Collaboration Tools Make Past Successes Repeatable You’ve run successful campaigns and projects before, sure. But do you still have the data connected to those victories? Do you have baseline information on how long production took for the last product release so you can improve the process this time around? With all your project info in project management software, its ability to record time spent and lessons learned will give your group the ability to document, examine, and duplicate successful programs. Action: Look at the programs your team needs to repeat or find a specific project that was managed using your current system. Research that project's info (e.g. how long production took, how many people worked on it, etc.), and track the amount of time it takes you to generate a report that you can show your boss. Then try to do the same using a free trial of a collaboration tool like Wrike. Track how long it takes. Present the two reports side by side and contrast ease of use, availability of data, and time spent. Real examples provide real support. Evangelize: Advantages of Better Collaboration Tools Finally, discuss the advantages of a collaboration tool: visible task lists help reduce the number of meetings, it’s much more difficult for tasks to fall through the cracks when projects are organized and visible, reports can be more easily generated when all project data is in one system, team members are more accountable for their work when they see their tasks and deadlines in black and white, etc. Think about what a collaboration tool would mean for you and your teamwork. Action: List the benefits that a collaboration tool like Wrike can give your team. Focus on the advantages the software gives your team. You can also read case studies of current customers within your industry who are using the software you’re considering. If their use cases are the same, give these to your boss as proof of how a collaboration tool can help your team. How will you convince your boss you need a better collaboration tool? Share your wisdom and your past experiences in the comments below! Download our free eBook for tips on finding a more efficient tool:Why Managers Need to Break Up with Email and Spreadsheets Related Reads:Top 9 Project Management Tool Features on the SMB Wishlist8 Lessons in Increased Productivity from Wrike CustomersHow I Use Online Collaboration Tools to Run a Marketing Team

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4 Ways Collaboration Tools Boost Team Performance

1. Improve quality

2. Increase velocity

3. Reinforce accountability

4. Spark innovation

Your team is your greatest resource

Emily Bonnie

Related articles

3 Collaboration Tips for Enhancing Teamwork

Top 3 Trends Shaping Project Collaboration

How to Convince Your Boss You Need Better Collaboration Tools

4 Ways Collaboration Tools Boost Team Performance

1. Improve quality

2. Increase velocity

3. Reinforce accountability

4. Spark innovation

Your team is your greatest resource

Emily Bonnie

Related articles

3 Collaboration Tips for Enhancing Teamwork

Top 3 Trends Shaping Project Collaboration

How to Convince Your Boss You Need Better Collaboration Tools

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