5 Collaboration tools your team needs to successfully work remotely

Collaboration.

It’s one of the biggest reasons that many business owners are sceptical about allowing their team to work remotely.

When your whole team is in the office, collaboration is simple.

You might be in the same room or even a quick walk down the hall away from your colleagues.

This makes it easy to ask for quick updates, information or help.

But when you’re working remotely, this quick, easy and simple collaboration just simply isn’t possible.

But luckily, there are an array of collaboration tools out there that will help you to continue connecting.

Here are just a few of the collaboration tools that we recommend to make it easy for you to continue to connect and collaborate with your team whilst working remotely.

1. Video Conferencing

Cloud-based video conferencing has been extremely useful for businesses and individuals during the COVID-19 lockdown period. It has allowed business owners to connect their distributed people on a video call on any smart device or laptop, from absolutely anywhere. Industry leading applications like Lifesize, Zoom, GoTo Meeting, Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx and Google Meet have given remote workers a simple and easy way to start a video call, join a meeting or schedule a video call from their PC, Mac, tablet or phone. This has meant all remote workers have been able to stay connected and continued to be able to collaborate with their colleagues.

Find out more about our video conferencing solutions

2. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams has become the leading team collaboration hub for businesses across the Globe. It has proven to be an exceptional tool for continual collaboration and document sharing within the Office 365? platform. For some businesses Microsoft Teams has become an all-in-one hub, allowing users to make a video call, share their screen, co-author files in real time and streamline tasks by using popular apps and workflows. Teams is especially a great choice for you if you already pay for an Office 365 Premium or Essentials subscription, as it is already included within the plan.

3. VoiP Telephony

Enabling your people to answer the office landline from their remote locations was a big problem many business owners faced when their colleagues went fully remote. Popular VoiP brands such as, 8×8, Wildix, RingCentral, GoToConnect and CircleLoop have enabled you to take the office phone home with them. VoiP enables you to make and receive secure business calls from the office landline on an application on your PC, laptop, tablet or mobile device, no matter where you are. For many businesses, the ability to transfer calls is imperative for a seamless experience for their customers.

With a cloud-based voice platform, transferring calls to other remote colleagues is simple and creates a professional and smooth experience for your callers.

4. OneDrive

OneDrive is a Microsoft application included within the Office 365 subscription. It has enabled users to store, access and share files from all of their smart devices. When you edit a file saved on your OneDrive when you are offline, any changes and updates you make will be automatically updated the next time you are connected to the internet.

OneDrive enables you to work on documents with individuals inside and outside of your organisation, allowing you to continue to collaborate on continuous projects happening internally and externally of your organisation.

5. TeamViewer

IT support is essential to ensure your remote workers can successfully complete their daily tasks without incurring any problems. TeamViewer has become an essential remote desktop tool for IT people, enabling your IT support to assist you without the need to be at your desk.

Your IT admins will be able to use TeamViewer to remotely connect to employee’s desktop computers and mobile devices from anywhere, at any time for real time support or access to files, networks and programmes. Remote onto the end users machine whilst also on video with them for a fully collaborative experience.

Your IT teams will be able to connect across multiple platforms and invite additional IT technicians into complex support sessions, ensuring all members of your team can continue to work from home successfully. TeamViewer has also been successful in enabling individuals to access their work PC from their remote locations, enabling them to access files that they would otherwise only have access to if they were in the office.

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Let me know in the comments what collaboration tools you have found to be the most useful when working remotely.