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Business collaboration is the process of assisting and cooperating with colleagues and contacts to further some aspect of shared business.
In other words, working together to further some goal or intent. Naturally, nothing is ever as simple as all that.
As trivial a problem as the form to order more supplies can provide a stumbling block, as different companies and even departments can have their own proprietary methods of doing things, forms and services available.
It isn’t enough to simply know how your firm handles everything needed; an understanding of industry practices and particular differences of any other companies with whom you collaborate is also necessary.
The internet provides a powerful tool to assist in inter-business cooperation. The business case for collaboration is built around optimization. The problem is that increased efficiencies of unknown quantities are a hard sell to accountants.
One method is to show how increasing internet based collaborations reduce the need for business travel. Another is to show a decrease in time spent in meetings or to make decisions as expertise not present in the company can be consulted as needed.
It is always easier to keep doing what is considered normal. Nobody asks for a business case to justify the telephone bill. Business collaboration is not yet at that level of acceptance, but is gaining.
This task is even harder for concepts like wikis or shared folders, allowing employees to quickly and efficiently find documents or information.
To learn more on this topic go to: Business Document Management. Business document management, what is it, is there any way to improve it, and does it need improving and what document management software is there?
It is still possible to devise means to show measurable improvements in performance due to business collaboration and the tools required. It requires careful thought about what to measure, since picking the wrong metric might yield ambiguous results, and the nature of the metric is heavily influenced by the job and corporate culture.
Facilitate is a business collaboration provider allowing online meetings, file sharing, surveys, chatrooms and tools to brainstorm, plan, categorize and prioritize. The FacilitatePro platform is built around web conferencing with an emphasis on collaboration and two-way communication, rather than lectures.
Anonymity is possible, to strip away hidden agendas and allow thoughts to be evaluated by content rather than who presented them, though anonymity can also be forbidden if the group is not capable of such discipline. FacilitatePro can handle over seven hundred participants.
HyperOffice.com is another company providing business collaboration assistance. They offer professional email, document management, project management, shared calendars and customer management tools with a ten program integrated collaboration suite.
HyperOffice.com requires nothing but a computer with an internet connection, no need for downloads or plugins. Prices range from $44.99/month for five users up to $1499.99 for two hundred fifty users, with pricing options for higher, adding more users or more storage.
Related Article: How Online Project Collaboration Speeds Up Completion Of Your Projects
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