From Ideas to Impact: The Essential Role of Visual Collaboration in Team Success

Table of Contents

1. An introduction to visual collaboration
2. Defining the problem: The cost of inefficiency
3. The rise of visual collaboration
4. What the numbers say: The undeniable impact of visual collaboration tools
5. How to put visual collaboration tools into practice: 5 steps
6. Meet Klaxoon: The leading visual collaboration platform
7. The future of work is visual

Visual collaboration: A surefire necessity or simply a nice-to-have? 

Though it may have been viewed as the latter until recent years, visual collaboration is fast becoming an irreplaceable tool for your tech stack.

In his predictions list for 2025, Wrike Chief Product Officer Alexey Korotich noted:

In this guide, we’ll outline the role of visual collaboration — and what it means for your team. 

We’ll explore how inefficiency is draining company resources and the rise of visual collaboration as a solution. Then, we’ll offer five key steps for implementing these tools into your team processes. Finally, we’ll look at the benefits offered by Klaxoon, and how the consolidation of visual collaboration with Wrike’s work management can be the perfect recipe for success. 

Let’s dive in!

We’re human beings, so it’s normal for us not to be 100% efficient all day, every day. However, we should still be wary of the small activities that eat away at our productivity.  

Common inefficiencies, like those notifications that don’t concern you or the weekly report task that no one reads, seem small but they all add up — and this can have a knock-on effect on your company’s margins, stalling growth.

Collaboration today is chock-full of barriers, from unclear goals to inconsistent processes and a general lack of real-time visibility into the actual work that’s being done. Visual collaboration is almost non-existent as teams don’t have the suitable tools for a big-picture view.

Culprit no. 1? Meetings. Every manager knows the feeling: You have an ever-growing to-do list and a number of people waiting on deliverables. But how can you get the work done when half your time is spent in meetings?

And it’s not just managers —  knowledge workers are suffering, too. According to Wrike’s Dark Matter of Work report, 69% of business function leaders want to reduce the time their employees spend in meetings, but don’t know how.

Without a single source of truth for teams to rely on, time is wasted on activities like repeating work that’s already been done or following up on actions and statuses — and it costs the average enterprise millions. In fact, the annual cost of wasted time for businesses is a whopping $52 million, with the average knowledge worker costing $16,500.

Wrike’s DMoW report also noted that delays add an average of 65% to the cost of projects, while 25% of projects get canceled due to insufficient information. 

Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workforce report paints an even bleaker picture, stating: “Employees who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged cost the world $8.8 trillion in lost productivity.”

As you can see, a lack of engagement has a tremendous impact on productivity, costs, and efficiency. Luckily, there is a way to reignite engagement in your team — and it starts with visual collaboration.

Visual tools are having a moment. From the growth of augmented reality to the proliferation of video content in digital marketing, users are gravitating toward visual experiences. 

Visual collaboration software is no exception, experiencing rapid growth with no signs of slowing down. In fact, the visual collaboration platform market is expected to be worth over $3 billion by 2032. Much of this growth can be attributed to:

• Flexible work models: The sudden shift to remote and hybrid work has created exponential demand for tools that allow teams to collaborate online just as well as they do in person.
• Distributed teams: With flexible working now the norm, many more teams are dispersed across multiple time zones. This means the need for online platforms that allow people to work asynchronously and in real time is greater than ever.
• Advancements in tech: The surge of technologies such as AI and automation means people are looking for software that keeps up with the competition and offers the latest advancements.

To sum it up, the old ways won’t cut it — users need fresh tools that help them communicate, collaborate, and innovate. 

So, what exactly are visual collaboration tools? They incorporate a wide range of interactive technologies, including:

• Digital whiteboards
• Videoconferencing platforms
• Collaborative design software
• Real-time document editing applications

With these tools in their arsenal, teams are better equipped to share ideas visually and interactively — this is particularly appealing to creative leads as well as executive-level teams that need to speed up decision-making processes.

That said, the rise in popularity of visual collaboration software does pose some challenges:

• User adoption: Introducing a new organization-wide tool is no easy feat, especially for large enterprises. You’re almost guaranteed to have some reluctance among team members who don’t want to devote time to a new onboarding process.
• Integration with existing systems: If a new platform doesn’t integrate seamlessly with the existing tools used by a company, it can be a logistical nightmare. This process can cost the team valuable time in the early stages of implementation, and they may even choose to reject the tool further down the line.
• Cost management: For smaller businesses struggling with limited budgets, a new subscription fee simply might not be feasible. That’s why it’s better to aim for software that provides an all-in-one solution.

It’s up to each organization to navigate the above challenges so they can fully realize the benefits of visual collaboration tools. 

Sources

1 The Sage Handbook of Political Communication

2 MIT News

3 SSRN: Reaching the Visual Learner: Teaching Property Through Art

4 Forrester: Improving Collaboration Tools Facilitates Creativity, Innovation, and Profitability

5 Lucid: 2022 The Way We Collaborate Report

It doesn’t matter if you work in marketing, R&D, professional services, project management, HR, or IT — every team needs a visual collaboration tool that will help them master the following five steps.

Step 1: Ideate and align

The best place to start? You’ve guessed it — a brainstorming session. This is where you come up with ideas to solve business problems, improve existing processes, and even discover new opportunities. 

Unlike sharing a PowerPoint and hoping people pay attention, an interactive meeting ensures you keep all stakeholders engaged and that everyone has a voice. It also democratizes design thinking and ideation — here, everyone’s opinion is valued. 

Brainstorming goes hand in hand with mind mapping. Throwing out ideas is great, but you need to be able to link relevant ones together so you can develop them. This is where mind mapping comes into play. 

Step 2: Plan and resource

The next step is to decide what ideas your team will develop, and plan how these ideas will come to life.

You need to prioritize the tasks that are both feasible and promise to deliver the most ROI.  Then, you need to map out all these tasks (and the processes they will follow) into a structured project plan. 

Resources will be a big component here. As you plan capacity, you need to make sure you have the staff, materials, etc. to reach the targets you’ve set out. If you overcommit, you run the risk of burnout. 

Just like in the ideation step, an online visual collaboration tool will democratize the decision-making process and encourage everyone to get involved in building the roadmap. A strategy planning workshop will help you visualize and agree to all plans for your individual project or overall portfolio. 

Step 3: Execute work

So, now that everyone is aligned, it should be smooth sailing, right? Not exactly — at this stage, you might struggle to find the flow that turns plans into execution.

Sometimes, the best-laid plans go awry because teams end up working in silos. This is especially difficult with asynchronous teams that don’t have a lot of overlapping time periods.

Having an all-in-one visual collaboration platform means all the work is easily accessible to everyone at any time, anywhere, from any device. You can also use it to schedule regular syncs so everyone stays on the same page. 

If you’re in the same time zone, great. You can hold live sessions with your team and share updates in real time. If you’re working asynchronously, that’s no problem either. You can still exchange all the info you need and be confident that your platform reflects the most up-to-date decisions. 

Additional tools, like online boards and quizzes, can help you keep OKRs front of mind and your team members engaged.

Step 4: Report and analyze

Now, it’s time to see how your work is performing. 

We’ve already mentioned how valuable a single source of truth can be, but this is especially true when you’re dealing with complex stats. To avoid any errors or confusion, you’ll want to keep everything in one place. This includes reports, but also other files and documentation, creating one knowledge management hub that can be accessed across all teams and networks.

Online collaboration is not a one-and-done deal at the start of your project — it needs to be an ongoing process. You’ll likely have established OKRs and metrics to report on, and this stage will show whether you are on track or need to course-correct.

When choosing a visual collaboration tool, you want to be sure that it offers real-time analysis and reporting as well as an infinite canvas for your project reviews and milestone assessments. 

Step 5: Learn and improve

A successful project is an obvious win, but an unsuccessful one can still be valuable because of the lessons learned.

Use your visual collaboration platform to hold retrospective meetings to see what went wrong in a particular project. You can also sync to share best practices from previous projects and case studies. An online survey is another good way to collect learnings from the entire team. These insight-finding missions will ensure your next project goes off without a hitch.

By now, you should be well aware of the benefits of visual collaboration. But choosing the right platform can be tricky.

According to Lucid’s 2022 The Way We Collaborate Report, which surveyed over 3,000 people in five countries, “50% of respondents want better integrations between their digital collaborative solutions and their files, visuals, or apps.” Meanwhile, almost two-thirds said they wanted these tools to be more user-friendly. 

Your chosen tool should break down barriers so business-critical work can flow. 

Enter Klaxoon.

Klaxoon is a leading visual collaboration and productivity platform. Powering over 7,500 organizations with over a million users, Klaxoon provides a single platform combining an infinite whiteboard with visual collaboration services and tools, including:

• Board 
• Memo
• Session
• Adventure
• Network
• Quiz
• Survey
• Question
• Mission

These interactive features empower organizations to achieve their highest possible levels of engagement, driving innovation and productivity across teams and departments. Teams can use it to connect both unstructured and structured workflows.

With Klaxoon, you can seamlessly turn budding ideas into actionable outcomes.

Unlike other tools on the market, Klaxoon is more than just a whiteboard. It combines videoconferencing tools with diagramming, presentation, gamification, review, and other project management capabilities. Don’t want to lose your existing tech stack? No problem — Klaxoon seamlessly integrates with Microsoft and Google Workspace, and over 1,000 additional applications are available via Zapier.

Klaxoon’s built-in features are designed to help teams drive participation in meetings, engage every stakeholder, and develop training initiatives. The robust platform streamlines entire workflows, taking all the insights gained from collaborative sessions and turning them into dynamic, results-driven experiences for organizations of all sizes.

Klaxoon is now part of the Wrike product portfolio. The combined Wrike and Klaxoon platforms cater to teams across diverse industries like manufacturing and professional services, as well as departments ranging from marketing to training to PMO. 

Rather than a disjointed company-wide system, organizations can now benefit from end-to-end workflows — such as portfolio management, product lifecycle management, marketing campaign management, and client service delivery — so work truly flows.

This unique fusion of visual ideation with structured work management will deliver unparalleled workflow efficiency. Additionally, Klaxoon’s AI-powered innovations combined with Wrike’s Work Intelligence® solution and offline capabilities ensure flexibility, making it a game changer for global, hybrid, and remote teams.

At the time the acquisition was launched, Wrike CEO Tom Scott said:

So, is visual collaboration a necessity or a nice-to-have? 

The potential of visual collaboration to turn ideas into outcomes is too compelling to ignore. To cut inefficiencies, stay competitive, and deliver impactful work, you need the right tools that give you the big picture.

If you’re on the hunt for your first visual collaboration tool or are looking to upgrade from your existing one, look no further than Wrike and Klaxoon. Ready to join the new era of digital workplace collaboration? Head over to our website or get in touch with our sales team today.