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Collaborative work management is managing the flow of tasks and projects across multiple teams, departments, and even organizations, and it requires a different set of collaboration tools than internal project management.
Once upon a time, collaborative work management was simple. Everyone sat in the same office, used the same meeting rooms, and a collaboration tool was a blackboard and a piece of chalk, or an A3 paper on a conference room table.
However, today those days are little more than a memory.
Between a remote workforce, an increasingly global market, and easy access to freelancers and agencies alike, many companies need new tools to manage their collaboration if they want to stay competitive.
At the same time, the number of collaboration tools is staggering, and each of them have their own unique features and benefits. From communication to task management, automation, and file-sharing hubs. And it’s your job to figure out which of them you need.
But you have questions that need answers.
What is the difference between collaborative work management and project management? What are the best collaboration tools for enterprise level businesses, and how do you make sure you choose the best collaboration tool for your business?
In this article we’ll help you answer all of them, and we’ll give you 3 tips on how to choose the best collaboration tool or platform for your business.
While collaborative work management may sound like it’s just a fancy name for project management, there’s a bit more to it than that. Collaborative work management is managing the flow of tasks and projects across multiple teams, departments, and even organizations.
While there are plenty of tools out there that will help you with the ins and outs of project management, and how to best structure your team, the tools needed to succeed when managing both internal and external collaborators are a little different.
Collaborative work management is mostly a discipline in large organizations where ordinary collaboration tools that structure projects across a single team isn’t going to cut it, and that’s where the need for enterprise collaboration tools comes in.
Enterprise collaboration tools, also sometimes called collaboration tools for businesses, are software solutions that help with project management, communications, documentation, approval, and asset management. They often help connect teams with other internal teams as well as freelancers, clients or agencies and include features like file-sharing and organization, task assignment, and workflow management, which makes it easier to collaborate regardless of the location, department or company of the people you collaborate with.
The ideal enterprise collaboration tool helps structure collaboration between employees, freelancers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
Let’s start out by stating that there is no single “best collaboration tool” there are, however, a lot of really good collaboration tools on the market, which can make it difficult to choose the right one.
Which collaboration tool is best depends on your organization, the industry you work in, the type of projects you are managing and who the collaborators are. The best collaboration tool for a production agency will need different capabilities than the best collaboration tool for a retailer or a chain of restaurants.
What every single organization needs from their collaborative work management tool is that it is simple to set up, easy to use and that the features it offers will help increase the productivity of the organization.
When we say collaboration tools, most people will either picture project management tools like monday.com and Asana, or their minds will jump to communication tools like Slack, MS Teams or Zoom.
This isn’t a problem, as such, but it outlines why choosing the right tool can be so difficult. Because on top of the more general tools that handle project management or digital communications, there are a number of enterprise collaboration tools that connect multiple functionalities in one platform.
So, to help you choose the best collaboration tool for your business, we’ve got three tips for you before you make a choice.
Don’t think about prices or complexity when you start out, simply make a list of every single collaboration tool that would solve a problem you have in your collaborative work management.
An example of the list could look like this:
The list you end up with will usually give you a pretty good idea of where to go, when you’re looking at a dedicated enterprise collaboration system. In the beginning it will work as a checklist, but as you will soon find out, most enterprise collaboration tools are customized to include the features you need, which is why the list can also be used as a shopping list when you’re explaining which functionalities you need to a potential provider.
As your list has probably revealed, some collaboration tools are mainstays in the corporate world, and let’s face it, no matter how good a collaborative work management platform you find, there’s no chance it will completely replace your email carrier, your company calendar or your design tools.
But switching between multiple systems while working is definitely going to slow productivity down, which is the opposite of what you want to achieve when you’re investing in an enterprise collaboration tool.
The answer to this challenge is rather simple. Integrations.
If your entire organization is using Slack to manage internal communication, and you aren’t looking to replace Slack, you should look for a collaborative work management platform that can integrate with Slack, so project communication doesn’t end up siloed or slow.
When it comes to investing in technology, and especially expensive technology, many of us have a tendency to lean towards the ‘safe choice’, the system that everyone else uses, but this is actually a mistake, and it could be hurting your business more than you think.
No one ever got fired for buying an IBM solution for their company. And the same could probably be said for many of the big collaboration platforms.
But there are two problems with picking ‘the safe choice’ especially if you do so because ‘it’s the system everyone else uses’.
The first problem is that these platforms aren’t made for your business. They’re made for the average. So, instead of getting a marketing collaboration tool, an agency collaboration tool, or a supplier collaboration tool, you end up with a plain collaboration tool. While it will most likely contain many of the features you are looking for, they aren’t tailored to the situation you need them for.
For instance, your ‘safe choice’ could have excellent communication features, but it may not be able to divide users into user groups and assign rights based on agency clients, suppliers, or the freelancers you need to collaborate with on different parts of a project.
The second problem, is that most of the safe choices are made by big companies, and while that does have some benefits, it also means that the system you choose is already a little antiquated when you walk out the door, it’s the safe choice because it’s been around for years, it’s been through the works, and there’s a slim chance there’ll be implemented new features based on the feedback you provide.
Whether you are a retail organization, a big brand, or a production agency, when it comes to collaborative work management, you should take a look at the Encodify platform.
The Encodify platform is an all-in-one collaboration tool for marketing teams and production agencies and includes features like:
But we do more than just deliver a fixed set of features to help with your marketing collaboration. We use the modules and integrations available in the platform to make sure that the solution you end up with is tailored to fit the needs of your organization.
Consulte nuestros planes para descubrir cuál es el adecuado para usted y cómo puede personalizarlo a la perfección.
Reserve una demostración gratuita y le mostraremos cómo la plataforma Encodify le ayudará a conectar sus esfuerzos de marketing.
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