How Collaboration Tools Help Teams Increase Productivity & Creativity

Collaboration Tools Best Collaboration Tools

In today’s fast-paced and interconnected world, collaboration has become the cornerstone of successful teamwork. Gone are the days of isolated workspaces and siloed departments. Instead, organizations are embracing the power of collaboration tools to foster creativity, enhance productivity, and drive innovation. These tools provide teams with a virtual space to communicate, share ideas, and work together seamlessly, regardless of geographical boundaries.

If you’re considering using collaborating tools, you’re in the right place! 

Keep reading to learn more.

The importance of collaboration in the modern work environment

You know how they say: the only certain thing is the change. The modern work environment is mostly characterized by rapid changes followed by complexity and interdependence. Collaboration brings together diverse perspectives, skills, and knowledge, fostering a collective intelligence that far surpasses individual efforts. 

Collaboration also enhances problem-solving by encouraging open dialogue, constructive feedback, and collective decision-making. Furthermore, in an era of remote work and global teams, collaboration transcends geographical boundaries, enabling seamless communication and collaboration regardless of physical location.

Understanding collaboration tools

Having in mind everything said above, it’s understandable that companies of all sizes understood the importance of collaboration. Even though collaboration can be performed “manually” in each organization, there are cases where some kind of automation and a more defined structure are needed. As a result of that need, collaboration tools have become very popular.

Understanding collaboration tools is essential for organizations that want to increase their teams’ productivity and creativity. Collaboration tools are applications or platforms designed to facilitate teamwork by providing a centralized space for communication, document sharing, project management, and more. These tools help teams to collaborate in real-time, regardless of their physical location which has come especially handy in the period of Covid pandemic.

Thus, they come in various forms, from different chatting tools, and video conferencing, to tools dedicated for document management and project management. 

Here we’re going to cover the two most important types of collaboration tools – productivity and creativity tools.

Enhancing team productivity with collaboration tools

Before the pandemic, the most mentioned argument when debating remote work was the aspect of productivity. Managers and C-level people in general, have been doubtful about keeping the same level of productivity if the team is not physically present. But, the pandemic hasn’t left anyone with many choices, so everyone had to do their best out of a bad situation and adapt to new circumstances. 

Those new and completely unforeseen circumstances have made room for collaboration tools. 

Collaboration tools play a vital role in enhancing team productivity by providing teams with the means to streamline their workflow, improve communication, and optimize project management.

Besides helping to overcome communication issues, collaboration tools also promote transparency and accountability by providing visibility into project timelines, task assignments, and progress updates. Furthermore, this helps avoid misunderstanding since everyone knows what the other team members are working on, so there is no duplicated work. 

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What collaboration tools help with team productivity?

Plenty of collaboration tools enhance team productivity, but let’s cover a couple of the most popular and most-used ones.

Nowadays it’s hard to imagine that there is a company not using Slack. Slack has become probably the most popular tool for team communication and collaboration. It’s mostly used for informal communication among team members. Besides messaging, it allows you to share images and files and create different channels/groups. Even though it has a paid option, you will face no problems with staying on the free plan. 

Using Slack, How to use Slack

When working remotely, one of the main struggles is maintaining productivity and connection among team members. Microsoft has developed a tool called Teams, which as the name suggests, allows teams to send instant messages, held video calls, store data, and integrate the app with other tools. 

Step into a new era of webinar hosting with RingCentral Webinar, where engaging and impactful communication takes center stage. Imagine effortlessly captivating audiences of up to 10,000 attendees, a seamless all-in-one app that handles everything from setup to analysis, and the freedom for participants to join directly through their web browsers. But it doesn’t stop there—immerse your audience with interactive features, masterful rehearsals, and the power of YouTube Live integration for unparalleled reach. 

If you’re curious about a solution for small-scale video conferencing with up to 200 participants, check out RingCentral vs Zoom review to learn which video meeting tool is better for your team. 

Asana is one of the collaboration tools that deserve to be mentioned when discussing tools that help increase productivity. This is a very flexible and easy-to-use tool that helps companies to keep track of the employee’s workload and task progressions. It allows you to divide projects into segments that can be further organized based on various smaller tasks. When every team member has a clear understanding of how much has been done, and what remains, room for misunderstandings is close to none. 

Cross-team Collaboration, Asana tool

Google Drive is a part of Google Workspace that enables the safe usage of different documents. Whether you need to create and share tables, docs, pdf, images, or presentations, this tool would be just the perfect choice. Speaking of presentations, Google Slides, another key part of Google Workspace, allows you to craft captivating presentations from scratch. Alternatively, you can expedite the process by employing eye-catching presentation templates available for Google Slides or PowerPoint.

By simply signing up to your Google account, you get 15GB of free storage, which should be more than enough for your needs. Its main benefit is the trustworthiness that stands behind a brand name such as Google. Moreover, it’s completely free which is especially important for companies that are tight on the budget. 

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Teamwork is an online project management solution used by more than 20.000 companies. This tool offers you to organize your project into different phases, where each phase can be presented in a chart and board view. Each team member can track their time spent and overall progress on different tasks, by also allowing other team members to have an insight into their workload. 

Collaboration tools, Teamwork

Fostering creativity through collaboration tools

Collaboration tools have the potential to foster creativity by providing platforms for idea generation and sharing. Through these tools, team members can collaborate in real-time, brainstorming ideas, providing feedback, and building upon each other’s thoughts, thereby encouraging innovative thinking and sparking creative solutions.

While working remotely, you’ve probably faced that inconvenience where you simply can’t put your point across verbally. You’re missing a whiteboard, only to scratch a couple of things and make them clearer. Well, Mural helps with that. Mural helps you share your thoughts visually by using drawing boards, sticky notes, and everything else that you would probably use in your office while having a brainstorming session. A huge plus is that this tool comes completely free of charge.  

Enterprise Collaboration, Mural, Digital Whiteboard

Visme is a graphic design and online whiteboarding software is ideal for those who are new to design and for professionals too. It offers a user-friendly interface and requires minimal time to learn. You can effortlessly generate ideas, make quick sketches, and design with ease. While you have the option to create your whiteboard and sketch from scratch, our team has developed professionally crafted whiteboard templates that are fully customizable and easy to comprehend, providing a great starting point for your designs.

Visme graphic design, online whiteboarding software, Visme

Salesflare is the perfect CRM for small and medium businesses that sales team actually love to use. The CRM is not as dependent on sales people to fill it out, as it automates most of the data input. Salesflare makes it easy to work together as a team as you can share all your team’s communication with a customer in one place, so you can serve your customers as a true team.

You can see who in your team knows whom at a company and how well, so you can build stronger relationships together. You can create reusable, standard templates that you can quickly easily insert into emails within Salesflare and Gmail.

You know how Google Drive lets you leave a comment in the file or on a table? Well, GoVisually does the same when it comes to designs. If your company is working on internal visuals, or providing visuals for the clients, a tool such as GoVisually can be of great help. It allows you to select parts on the visual and directly add a comment. By doing so, everyone is on the same page – everyone understands right away what the problem is and there are no misunderstandings. 

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Figma is another great tool when it comes to having creative brainstorming sessions. Truth be tools, this tool will probably be more used by UI designers because it enables the whole team to work simultaneously, while the work is constantly saved and updated. It also comes in very handy when you need to make visual changes on the website or create a completely new page. 

With the help of Figma, you can create different page drafts rather quickly without wasting time on creating the actual pages on the website test environments. As you already know, these tasks request many changes and go through different phases until everyone agrees on the final version. Thus, having the help of one such tool is a lifesaver. 

Challenges and Benefits – how to approach them?

As is the case with everything else, collaboration tools also come with their pros and cons. 

One of the primary challenges lies in effectively integrating these tools into existing workflows and ensuring seamless adoption across team members who have to learn how to use them. Besides being adopted by team members, you need to make sure that these tools can easily be integrated with the software that you’re using.

Additionally, teams may face difficulties maintaining clear communication channels and preventing information overload within the tool. However, the benefits of collaboration tools far outweigh these challenges. 

These tools enable teams to work together regardless of geographical barriers, fostering a sense of inclusivity and promoting diverse perspectives. They facilitate real-time collaboration, allowing for instant feedback and iterative improvements. 

Thus, it’s only important to do a bit of investigation before making a decision. Be sure of what kind of tool you need, and then check what options there are on the market, which features they offer, and by which price plans. 

Conclusion

In a world where effective teamwork and innovation are paramount, collaboration tools have become essential for organizations of all sizes and industries. By providing virtual spaces for communication, idea sharing, and real-time collaboration, collaboration tools empower teams to break free from the limitations of traditional work setups.

In this article, we covered some of the most important points when it comes to understanding the importance of these tools, by also presenting a couple of them that we think could be useful. 

If you’re using some of these tools, feel free to share your experience. If, however, you would like to share your impressions about a tool that we didn’t mention, you’re more than welcome to do it in the comments! 

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