The nature of work today usually means being a member of at least one project team--often more than one. Working in conjunction with a number of people means more interaction is necessary to pull everything together.
Teams collaborate in order to:
- solicit feedback
- get questions answered
- build consensus
- finalize deliverables
- and meet deadlines
Unfortunately, that usually means a lot of email messages that copy everyone involved—even if "everyone" doesn't need to be included on every communication thread. Even worse, chaos can follow when messages get deleted by mistake or overlooked in a cluttered inbox.
Overflowing inboxes are productivity inhibitors. If you've ever spent a day living in your inbox because messages just keep pouring in, you've surely thought there must be a better way.
There is. It's a collaborative workspace.
A collaborative workspace is a secure online environment for virtual team interface. You can also leverage your existing investments in unified communications by adding telephony capabilities to the workspace to easily manage voice communications through your computer when you're away from the office.
The beauty of a workspace is that it enables you to easily and securely include team members outside your company — suppliers, partners and customers, for example. Project team facilitation becomes easier when all members are working together with the same information at hand.
Consider a few benefits from putting an end to mass project emails:
- With the discussion forum questions and answers can be posted within the space, keeping all threads of information on record for simplified teamwork and collaboration. Imagine not having to search through dozens of emails to find an answer to a question asked three weeks ago.
- Documents can be checked out and worked on by team members, eliminating the question about which version is the latest and greatest — streamlining project management and creating a legacy record of the project details and deliverables.
- Know instantly who's available when you need them. Instant message for brief exchanges, escalate IM to a phone call or invite available team members to jump on a video conference to gain a fast consensus for a decision that keeps the project moving forward to meet milestone dates.
- Desktop Sharing enables team members to share work in progress with the team in real time, facilitating discussions that can help to modify the work as a group and eliminate the delays caused by forwarding documents via email for individual review and response.
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