5 Benefits of Modern Technology for Team Collaboration

Updated Oct 3rd, 2023 by Nicolas Zenker

Collaboration has always been the key to a successful business, but it has become increasingly important as more companies have started adopting work from home policies to keep their employees safe.

To this end, technology becomes the heart of every collaborative workforce — and it’s not hard to see why. Research has found that when teams utilize tools to work more communicatively and efficiently, it adds an extra $900 billion to $1.3 trillion to the local economy. Indeed, companies both big and small can benefit from these apps.

From video conferences to centralized access, here are five benefits of modern technology for team collaboration.

Efficient Communication

Most collaboration tools, such as Slack and Trello, will have messaging apps that help your team to communicate much more efficiently. For instance, you can tell who is online and readily available to answer queries. So if you need to contact someone urgently but you know they’re not there to address your problem, it’s easy to delegate the work to someone who is. These tools allow you to upload files, too, and even let you separate discussions into channels so everything is organized.

Online Meetings

Whether it’s to give weekly updates or address a concern, businesses need to regroup every now and then to stay aligned. It might be tricky to host meetings in your current workspace, but it’s not entirely impossible. Tools such as Sync.in and Skype are excellent web conferencing software that you can use. They even have extra functions such as screen sharing (useful for presentations) to make your meetings go as smoothly as possible. You can also have everyone install an online scheduling tool to remind them of said meetings, so they can prepare for them accordingly.

Centralized Files

The nature of collaborative work means that people are going to be uploading and downloading files regularly. This can get tricky, especially for industries that require lots of updated data. Industrial designers and manufacturers alike have found team collaboration and PCB design software to be a critical component of daily operations. This software keeps all files within a central system, complete with reports to let you track changes. Users who want to work on a project on their own can download local files, which the system will then sort into the file repository once uploaded.

Enhanced Security

For industries that deal with a lot of sensitive information, such as retail and the legal sector, their first priority is to be able to work online without worrying about compromising confidential files. Luckily, not only are collaboration tools encrypted, but they also give you total control as to who sees your data, and what they see. It’s certainly a much better option than sending your files over email, as emails have seen a 600% increase in threats over recent weeks.

Quick Editing

Rather than sending your documents back and forth for edits and approval, an online document collaboration tool like Office 365 can help you process papers much faster. Once your file has been uploaded, everyone with the link and proper access can comment, annotate, edit, and approve it within minutes. This is especially useful for banks, real estate, and other industries that deal with a lot of paperwork.

Online collaboration starts with having the right tools. As a general tip, make sure that you’re only using one or two tools simultaneously so your workflow is more centralized. Just make sure that the tool/s that you ultimately choose will have all the features that you want, as well as the scale that you require.