Move Your Business Online with Virtual Collaboration Tools

Paste your parsed code here. Paste your parsed code here. At present, managing distributed teams does not take much time and effort. Business is done ‘on the fly’ with the help of modern collaboration technologies. These are technologies that, in the olden days, could only be afforded by big businesses. With increased competition among service providers, the cost of these technologies has greatly reduced enabling just about every small business to be able to afford them.

However, before applying these tools for your business, you have to identify its requirements and also factor in what your employees need. As soon as you identify these two things, you will have no problem in choosing the right communication and collaboration tools for your business.

The following are the types of tools you are going to need to move your business online:-

Moving whiteboard to the cloud
The basic level of collaboration between two or more employees is available at the virtual whiteboard services where users can share their virtual boards, leave comments or edit text remotely. Here are some of whiteboard collaboration tools: Scriblink, Scribblar, 37signals Backpack and Campfire.

Exchanging files
Virtual teams also require the ability to exchange files and other information between each other. Cloud based storage services offer a number of protected file storage solutions which allow users to share folders, upload and download documents, etc. The leading suppliers of such services are the following: DropBox, SugarSync, Google Drive, and PogoPlug Team.

These services offer a perfect way of managing large volumes of data that are used by team members. With high speed internet connection, these services are available practically everywhere. They ensure an effective way of cooperation between distributed employees.

Virtual meetings
The quality of web cameras and monitors, as well as the speed of the Internet connection, have improved significantly and provide a possibility of holding video conferences with many participants at the same time. At last, businesses have realized that they can save much money on travel expenses by replacing them with video conferences.

Services such as Skype and GoToMeeting let your business use innovative solutions for video-conferencing.

Virtual management
Implementing collaboration tools, such as Basecamp, Zoho Planner, etc., in the process of performing project tasks not only simplifies the interaction between employees and saves time but also ensures such factors of effective business process management as:

-) Transparency of performed joint tasks and assignment of responsibility.
-) Taking timely corrective actions.
-) Eliminating the risk of losing operational information or its distortion as a result of bad internet connection.
-) Better handling of information from external and internal sources and standardization of data presentation formats.
-) Tracking effective labor resource usage.

Thanks to the development of modern innovative technologies, managing remote teams and individual employees has become easy and less problematic. However, understanding which type of communication, collaboration and management you’d like to have is essential for choosing the right software or tool. 

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