It works better for projects than email. It’s in the cloud. It’s more affordable than ever.
For these reasons and more, an increasing number of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are now using collaboration technology. According to InformationWeek, one third of all SMBs are spending more on collaboration this year.
When you consider that transitioning to a new collaboration solution means you’re basically changing the way your team communicates and gets things done, it can be a big deal. But now that there’s a pond full of collaboration solutions to choose from, thanks to the cloud, chances are your IT pro can find one that’s just right for your organization. A good fit makes all the difference!
Here are some of the main reasons that SMBs are moving away from the old way of doing things toward more efficient, streamlined collaboration processes that include services like file sharing, video conferencing, messaging, dashboarding, micro-bogging, reporting and more:
- Email has become a glaringly inefficient way for teams to communicate about major projects, plus email programs are not designed to store or manage hundreds of attachments so problems are almost inevitable
- Team members are out of the loop or working with old versions of documents because project management processes don’t work well for complex projects with a lot of deliverables, deadlines, tasks and responsibilities
- CEOs and other management need to know what’s going on with each project in real time so they can track progress, make adjustments and make better decisions and projections
- Some content needs to be shared with specific teams, suppliers or customers while other content needs to be shared with completely different groups – and all of it needs to be tracked efficiently
- Licensing fees for cloud-based solutions can be very attractive today — even SharePoint, the Microsoft collaboration tool that sets the standard for all the rest, now offers bundled online services for as low as $10 per month per user
