mobile-friendly business collaboration

Five mobile-friendly tips for greater business collaboration

When things go wrong in the workplace, it’s more often than not a lack of teamwork that’s to blame. As a matter of fact, one survey found that 86% of business professionals cited a lack of communication and collaboration as the top reason behind workplace failures.

It’s clear that enabling business collaboration is more important than ever before. Luckily, there are a wealth of tools to help make it happen – no matter how mobile, flexible, or distributed your business might be. Here are five mobile-friendly ways that you can help enable collaboration in your workplace.

Embrace the cloud

When you rely on locally hosted files transferred from one employee to another by email, collaboration can become a convoluted nightmare. But to make it a dream, simply use the cloud.

A well-chosen, secure cloud solution can enable your workers to access files from anywhere in the world, on almost any device, and in real time.

Make meeting online easy

Video conferencing has a reputation for being sensitive and difficult to maintain, but with recent developments, that’s quickly becoming a thing of the past. Video conferencing is now quick, reliable, and usually more economical than arranging to meet in person.

To reduce friction still further, you can create a digital meeting room. This resides permanently at a single URL known to all your employees, making it extremely quick and easy to organize or join a meeting. When video conferencing is easy, collaboration becomes lightning quick as well.

Teach best practices

A successful collaborative workplace isn’t just composed of the right hardware and software – there are humans in there, too. Don’t neglect to train your employees in collaboration best practices. And do what you can to keep them up to date on how to work smart with the tools they have available to them.

It’s not just about efficiency, though. Establish a code of conduct in order to create a safe and positive online environment. When your employees feel good about the systems in place, they’re infinitely more likely to actually use them.

Related: 2 powerful ways to leverage modern technology

Think ahead about compatibility

Chances are, people within your company use a wide range of devices. If you decide to issue mobile devices to your employees or require a certain software or app to be used, be strategic. You don’t want to isolate part of your workforce by selecting an app or device that has very narrow compatibility — for example, selecting an app that only works with Android devices or a software that only works on Mac computers.

Related: 5 business apps to help you be more productive

Get your phones connected

Gone are the days of leaving messages on landline answering machines. With the emergence of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions, it’s now possible to route calls from landlines to mobile devices – and with little hassle, too.

The potential of this is huge. With a connected VoIP system in place, you can reach a coworker on their typical number, even if they happen to be on the other side of the world.

Implementing these solutions

If you’re not already familiar with VoIP or cloud computing, the idea of implementing new solutions like these can be daunting – particularly when you take into account the need to do so efficiently and securely.

That’s why many companies turn to a managed services provider to help them get up to date. Whatever your business needs, we’re here for you – just give us a call.