Working Together When You Work Apart: A Guide to A Unified Virtual Team
You want to start a business with a group of friends, but you all live in different cities. Will somebody – or several somebodies – have to move? Not these days. You can keep up with each other and share a “virtual office space” online. In fact, doing so may mean that you will save money on overhead, if your business is service-oriented. Instead of renting a physical bricks and mortar office space to share, you can operate within a free or nearly-free virtual space, and physically work at home (if you can stand the solitude and/or potential distractions). How will you do it? Here are a few pointers: Read more
What to Look for in Online Collaboration Tools for Small Business
Small businesses are more mobile today than ever. No longer are we tied to physical locations, or limited by technology in communicating with partners all around the world.
This is extremely exciting on one hand – great freedom for the business owner, larger reach, and an opportunity to work with the best and the brightest from literally around the world.
On the other hand this freedom offers up a real challenge when it comes to collaboration.
Assembling Virtual Work Teams
What is the best way to put together a work team that may not be centrally located to where you do business? How do we build teams, and transfer necessary information across work groups?
These are questions I think many small businesses owners are asking themselves. And the good news is that many online collaboration tools are now available to help facilitate the new way in which we do business.
What to Look for In Online Collaboration Tools
There are many choices, and numerous advantages in using an online collaboration tool. Here are the five main things you need to look for when deciding which provider is right for you.
#1 Security
Got to put this at the top of the list. If you are going to be putting a lot of your work, confidential or proprietary information, onto the web in order to collaborate you need to be sure the provider you choose is secure. Do they auto backup data? Do you have the option for enhanced security on your pages (https)? Don’t let a breech in their security become a breech in yours.
Do your homework – Online Security Safeguarding Your Business (via3.com white paper)
#2 Flexible and Reasonably Priced User and Storage Options
You want an online collaboration solution that offers enough storage for all the documents and files you expect to be sharing across your work teams.
Also you want to be sure you can add user accounts as your work teams grow. Most providers will offer graduated pricing based on the storage you need and the number of users. Look around until you find one that looks like it will allow you to grow as your business grows without any hidden upgrade fees, or sky high pricing.
#3 A Robust Suite of Tools
The basis of online collaboration is to collaborate, right? You’ll want to be sure your provider offers a suite of collaboration tools to fit your needs.
The basics should include:
- Tasks management
- Contact management
- File sharing and storage
- Private messaging
- Chat
- To do lists
- Message boards
- Email integration
- Calendars
The sky is the limit when it comes to features, you’ll also find that some providers offer:
- Blogging
- Polls
- Photo sharing
- RSS feeds
- Wikis
- Social media tools
Pick the one that offers the right selection of tools you’ll actually use. All the bells and whistles sound nice, but if you’re not going to use them you could be paying more for these features just to have them sit there.
#4 Simplicity of Design and Function
Using online collaboration should make your life easier, not more stressful. Look for a simple to use tool that encourages users to, well, use it! If it is too hard to understand, too cumbersome to work with, and more trouble than the end result, you’re going to have a hard time rallying the troops to make the switch to online work groups.
#5 Offers a No Obligation Free Trial
You really don’t know what you’ll be getting from any provider until you are in there using the software day in and day out. Do not sign up for something until you’vehad a chance to test drive the product and make sure it works for you and your business. Most will offer at least a 2 week trial so you can get the feel for how the system works before committing.
What are the Choices?
The choices are vast, and you will need to do your research. Early this year Business Pundit put out a great article, The 10 Best Collaborative Web Tools for Business , which should help you in your search.
They list their top 10 providers, as well as pros and cons of each, and a comprehensive overview of the software and service. OfficeMedium (latest sponsor of this blog) was rated as the #1 choice.
If online collaboration is something you’ve considered we recommend you head over there and check them out, see if what they offer is right for you.
Final Thoughts
The world is getting smaller, and we small businesses owners are able to do business in places we could only dream of a few short years ago. Online collaboration could mean a greater reach, with more efficiency to the small business. If you’re considering getting your teams together virtually, do your homework on the options out there and try out some of the solutions that look like they could work for you.
