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As remote work and virtual meetings take over, a collaboration portal becomes a must-have tool for organizations. Learn about the essential features and best practices to get the most out of it.
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Collaboration Portal: For Productivity and CustomerSatisfactionin the DigitalEra Remote work has become the new normal in the pandemic. Businesses that lagged in digital connectivity had to come upwithremotesolutions.Theylearnedhowtomanagetheir teamsremotely,encouragedigitalcollaboration,andprovide customerswiththeirneededtools. The outcome is that virtual format has now become anorm. 54 percent of Americans say that they want to continue working from home. 66 percent expect to go for a hybrid sales@crmjetty.com
model. As a result, communication and collaboration have undergone a drastic shift. Digital collaboration has become thenorm,andpost-pandemic,it’slikelytocontinue. • Businesses must adopt new digital methods like video chat, file sharing, and chat options to connect with employees andcustomers.Andthat’swhatwearegoingtocoverinthis article. • Collaboration portalfeatures • Collaboration portal bestpractices • Before we get into the features, let’s try to understand the role of the collaboration portal in your organization. Whether it’s a small team with a few customers or a big organization, collaboration software bridges the communicationgapbetweenemployeesandcustomers.Asa business, you can increase task completion, knowledge gathering, team-building exercises, and more. A collaboration tool connects customers/employees with the right people and channelizes information sharing to drive the rightdecisions. • Apart from that, there are various ways portals benefit your organization: sales@crmjetty.com
Streamlines communication by providing customers and employees with a unified interface: no more redundant emails andcalls. • Facilitates information storing and data sharing with communities, small groups, and individuals with a few clicks. • Enables teammates to work together even remotely. They can share documents, participate in discussions anddoalotmorewithinasingleworkspace. • Increases accountability and allows team members to gobackandcheckthemistakesandpreventthemfrom recurring. • Improves relationships with external stakeholders by allowing them to browse the knowledge base, submit questions,andmanageeverythingrelatedtotickets. • Eliminates trivial activities such as status updates, to-do lists, meetings requests. You can manage it all from oneplace. • Promotes business expansion and growth. Collaboration inspires teams to participate, shareideas, raise bars, and foster communication for business enhancement. • Builds your brand and shows you in a positive light in front of yourcustomers. sales@crmjetty.com
To garner these benefits, having the right set of features in your collaboration software is essential. And what are those features? Let’s seeit. Must-Have Collaboration PortalFeatures UnifiedCommunication A centralized network with internal communication capabilitieseliminatesthebottlenecksinhumaninteraction. With a centralized platform, you and your stakeholders can communicate related to a project within one place. Without searching through email threads, you can find relevant information in the chat group. The conversation threads help team members to provide feedback, request approvals, and send documents to each other. Apart from this, youcan take advantage of video calls, virtual meetings, streaming – everything from a singleplatform. sales@crmjetty.com
Slack, a communication tool, is a good inspiration for internal collaboration. It includes features like – search, notifications, screen sharing, customizable chatbots, and third-partyintegrations.Somesolutionsalsoallowattaching files with comments in internal messaging features to improve virtualconnectivity. • Here’swhatyoushouldincludetoenhancecommunication: • Real-time chat andmessaging • Audio and videoconferencing • Discussionthreads • Filesharing • Notifications andAlerts • Tip: Include stickers, GIFs, emojis in the chat platform.Offer all the possible communication channels in a singlegroup. sales@crmjetty.com
Let your team members choose how they would like to communicate. TaskManagement If the purpose of the collaboration is to expedite projects, then managing tasks would simplify the processes. Your remote team can manage their tasks and work as per their routine. You, on the contrary, can set up a task list for teams, send reminders to you and your team members, and attachfilestothelistforquickaccess. With task management, you can track your employees’ accomplishments, including project progress. It helps you meet goals and keep everyone on the same page. Trello, for example, allows users to collaborate within a board and create a card for every task that moves across the board witheasydrag-and-dropfunctionality.Userscanaddothers sales@crmjetty.com
to the task and even attach files to it. Other examples include Asana andWrike. • Key features toinclude: • Boardstocreateandmanagetasks • Taskassignmenttoaddpeopletotasks • Task prioritization to setschedule • Planningandschedulingtomeetdeadlines • Filemanagementtostoreandattachfiles • Comments and real-timesharing • Tip: Offer easy-to-read calendar views of tasks and deadlines. It will help you and your team members to plan, schedule, and adjusttasksbasedontheirobjectivesandgoals. • DocumentManagement • While working remotely, it can take a lot of time to access information that only one employee has access to. You/other team members might have to wait till theperson logs in, reads the message, and shares the file. Cloud-based document management, however, can make it easy for everyone in the organization to access documents, update, andforwardalongtootherteams. sales@crmjetty.com
G-suite products such as Google Drive helps users access and share Docs within the company. Based on their permissions, users can view, comment, or edit the docs in real-time, with changes automatically saved in the cloud. Similar to Google Docs, Quip provides a cloud-based workspacetocollaborateondocumentsinreal-time. • Also Read: A Complete Guide to DocumentManagement. • These types of cloud-based collaboration spaces can improve productivity by giving users access to all the files from oneplace. • Key highlights of this featureare: • Document and contentmanagement • Real-timecollaboration • Synchronousediting • Ready-madetemplates • Shortcuts for textformatting • Versioncontrol sales@crmjetty.com
Revisionhistory • Confluence and Samepage are other examples of document managementsoftware. • Tip:Namethedocumentsaccuratelysothatit’seasytoseethe latestversion. • SecurityFeatures • While focusing on collaboration and engagement, you should not forget the importance of data protection and security. The collaboration portal should offer various protection two-factor access,etc. layersandflexiblepermissionssuchas authentication,login,password,role-based The role-based access will restrict the users from accessing unauthorized information, while two-factor authentication ensures that a malicious person cannot access the portal. Don’tforgettoaddadditionalsecurityprotocols. sales@crmjetty.com
Tip: For two-factor authentication, ask users to provide a pin/password along with some form of identification such as questionprompts. • The collaboration portal features mentioned above are advanced features based on the type of collaboration software you’re looking for – project collaboration, knowledge collaboration, document and content collaboration, and socialcollaboration. • Here’salistoffeaturesyoucanaddifyou’rejuststarting: • Securelogin • Knowledgebase • Self-service • Documentsharing • In-appmessaging • Real-timenotification • Smartdashboard • Integratedcalendar • Develop your collaborationportal • To manage projects, documents, team collaboration, and more. • Collaboration Portal Development BestPractices sales@crmjetty.com
Get the most out of your collaboration software by implementing the followingpractices: BetterUI UI is important as your employees and customers won’t use a clumsy solution. Hence, it should be clutter-free,intuitive, and easy to search and navigate. While designing UI, ask questionslike–“howcanImakeitbetterforemployees?” Mobility Even if your team is working from a workstation throughout the day, your solution should give them the flexibility to work from mobile phones. Hence, offer mobility and responsiveness. Allow your employees to work from any device of theirchoice. IntegrationOpportunities Collaboration software should be flexible enough to integrate different tools for better results. It should allow sync with various marketing tools, whether it’s via API connectionorbackenddevelopment,forexample,Zoomand GoogleMeetintegrationforvideoconferencing. Automation Automation is the key to business productivity. The best thing you can do is – automate manual tasks likeorganizing sales@crmjetty.com
documents, sending real-time notifications and reminders of all the activities,etc. HybridApproach If your goal is to manage an entire business, bringing in one collaboration software won’t be enough. So, implement a hybrid approach, i.e., go for a custom collaboration portal development that manages documents, tasks, projects, communication, and overallbusiness. CRMJetty has been in the portal industry for more than a decade. We have served various clients from different industries with uniquerequirements. We combine all that experience with our industry knowledge and build custom solutions for our clients. If you need to develop a collaboration portal, we will develop a customoneperyourrequirementsandmarkettrends. Contactus Source: https:/ www.crmjetty.com/blog/collaboration-portal-in- digital-era/ sales@crmjetty.com