Collaboration tools are essential for any team that wants to communicate effectively, share feedback, and work on projects together. But how do you choose the best collaboration tool for your team? In this article, we will explore some of the factors to consider, and some of the popular options available.
The first step to choosing a collaboration tool is to understand your team's needs and goals. What kind of work do you do? How often do you need to communicate? What kind of feedback do you need to give and receive? How do you manage tasks and deadlines? How do you share files and documents? How do you measure your progress and results? These questions will help you define the features and functions that you need from a collaboration tool.
Determine what your team's goals are. Are you interested in increasing your speed to ship new products? Improving your revenue? Improving your customer success programs? Increasing your NDR? Providing your team with easy access to the information, metrics, and insights they need to make effective decisions will help them move faster. Data is extremely powerful when it is easily available and simple to use. Providing your team with collaboration tools that provide unique insights will unlock new opportunities.
In my experience, identifying a single internal communication channel that works well for all teammates is important for founders. Engaging team members across multiple applications can be burdensome. Try to stick to 1-2 channels that works for everyone. Teams works especially great because it’s an exclusive app that can be integrated with many other apps in the Microsoft family. Regularly meeting and communicating with your teammates in real time is extremely important. A daily or, at the least, a weekly team meeting, explaining what you’re working on that week, is extremely beneficial to hold one another accountable, and for organizational development.
The second step to choosing a collaboration tool is to consider your team's preferences and habits. How do you like to communicate? Do you prefer text, voice, or video? Do you need synchronous or asynchronous communication? Do you like to have formal or informal conversations? How do you handle conflicts and disagreements? How do you learn and adapt to new tools? These questions will help you find a collaboration tool that matches your team's culture and style.
The third step to choosing a collaboration tool is to evaluate your team's budget and resources. How much can you afford to spend on a collaboration tool? How much time and effort do you have to invest in setting up and maintaining a collaboration tool? How much training and support do you need to use a collaboration tool effectively? These questions will help you find a collaboration tool that fits your team's financial and operational constraints.
Exploring the popular collaboration tools available in the market is the fourth step to choosing the right one for your team. From Slack, a chat-based platform that facilitates quick and informal communication, to Microsoft Teams, a comprehensive and secure solution for those who use Microsoft products, to Google Workspace, a simple and reliable option, to Asana, a project management tool that allows for task creation and role assignment, to Trello, a flexible and intuitive platform, there are many collaboration tools to choose from, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Slack is great for fast communication, but can be overwhelming if not managed properly. Microsoft Teams is ideal for those who need a secure solution, but can be complex and confusing if not customized. Google Workspace is a reliable option, but may be limited in some advanced features. Asana is great for teams that need a visual way to manage their work, but can be tedious and repetitive if not automated. Finally, Trello is a great choice for teams that need an intuitive way to manage their work, but can be messy and chaotic if not structured well.
Popular Options for B2B SAAS are often more focused on the specific use cases required for the work that is done in this type of business. If you are working within a B2B SAAS company, consider Statype for a ready-built data platform to provide you with your core metrics and analytics. This will give you a holistic view of your entire organization so that you can have more effective collaborative discussions on topics including revenue, marketing, customers, and sales. Catalyst is a powerful Customer Success platform built for B2B SAAS teams. You can use Catalyst to create and automate playbooks for use cases such as onboarding and renewals.
Recently, Discord has been recommended as an alternative to Slack because of its subscription-free features. For example, Discord doesn't have message or voice/video call member limits that are present in Slack's free tier. However, Discord falls short in terms of app integrations compared to Slack. Some users have mentioned initial challenges in getting started with Discord, but once they understood and got used to the platform, Discord proved to be a robust and powerful tool.
The fifth step to choosing a collaboration tool is to test and decide. You can't really know if a collaboration tool works for your team until you try it out. You can start by doing some research, reading reviews, watching demos, and asking for recommendations. Then, you can sign up for free trials, set up some test projects, and invite your team members to join. You can then evaluate how the collaboration tool performs, how easy it is to use, how well it integrates with your other tools, and how satisfied your team is with it. You can then compare the results and feedback, and make a final decision.
Within each department or smaller team, there should be a consensus on alternative communication platforms if they choose not to use the company-wide tool as their main point of contact. Some departments may benefit from using different collaboration tools, but as long as they keep everyone informed through the main company-wide tool, it provides flexibility for each team to choose what suits them best while maintaining overall connectivity and coherence across the organization.
The sixth step to choosing a collaboration tool is to implement and improve. Once you have chosen a collaboration tool, you need to make sure that your team adopts it and uses it effectively. You can do this by providing clear guidelines, training, and support, and by encouraging feedback and suggestions. You can also monitor and measure how the collaboration tool impacts your team's productivity, performance, and satisfaction, and make adjustments and improvements as needed.
As in medicine, the key to the success of a collaborative tool is adherence. In my experience, the best way to drive adherence is documentation. Documenting involves writing step-by-step guides explaining why we use a tool, how we use it and a few examples. With good documentation presented at key moments such as onboarding and trainings and readily available, you reduce your team's effort to implement new tools. I recommend that one person on the team - usually the one who proposes a tool - be responsible for that documentation.
As platforms evolve, you might encounter situations where a tool that previously worked well for your team undergoes unfortunate changes. This can disrupt your budget plans and the overall workflow of the team. Be ready to pivot by either identifying a similar alternative or organizing a group meeting to explore options. Take, for instance, Slack altering its message limit for free plans in September 2022. While this change might not have immediately impacted team communication, the shift from a 10k-message limit to granting access to the past 90 days could later pose challenges. Teams might realize they can no longer access messages older than 91 days, even if they haven't reached the 10k message limit.