Why do companies use online collaborative productivity software?
Why should your company invest in this software?
Collaborative productivity software is any type of tool that a team uses to work together effectively in a digital environment.
If you’re thinking that’s a pretty broad category, you’re right. Anything from a project management platform, to an instant messaging tool, to a knowledge management solution technically falls under this umbrella.
This group of tools has seen a massive uptick in recent years, especially as more and more teams have continued working remotely or switched to hybrid arrangements. Data from Gartner shows that almost 80% of workers said they were using collaboration software at work in 2021—a sharp increase from the half of workers who said they were doing so in 2019.
What are the benefits of online collaborative productivity software?
This type of software is undoubtedly popular amongst SaaS teams. But why? Let’s take a look at the five benefits of these digital tools to get a better grasp on exactly why companies use online collaborative productivity software.
1. Centralize resources and communication
It’s hard for teams to be effective and efficient if they need to sift through a tangled web of email threads, instant messages, folders, spreadsheets, and documents to find the information they need.
Plus, this haphazard approach lacks consistency. Someone might drop a status update in a document comment while another person does so in an email thread. That increases the chances that wires will get crossed or important messages will be missed entirely.
Collaboration software centralizes your team’s assets and conversations so that everybody has a single source of truth to reference as they do their work. That central, shared hub reduces miscommunications, improves knowledge sharing, and minimizes frustrations.
2. Save time and money
When team members spend less time digging for what they need, they have more time and energy to focus on their actual work. So, it comes as little surprise that collaboration software boosts productivity and helps teams work with increased speed.
However, digitally-connected teams don’t only save time—they save money too. Take a tool like GoLinks, for example, which helps teams quickly share information with short, memorable links. GoLinks has found that an employee with a salary of $80,000 per year can face roughly $15,000 in productivity loss annually due to poor knowledge access and sharing.
To put it simply, if your team isn’t supported with the right tools to connect and collaborate effectively, you’re leaking hours and dollars (and fueling frustration in the process).
3. Improve clarity and transparency
Employees crave transparency. They want to not only know what decisions are being made, but why those are happening in the first place. In fact, 80% of workers say they want to know and understand more about how choices are made within their organization.
That higher level of visibility is almost impossible to provide if communication is siloed and people don’t have access to the bigger picture.
Collaboration software solves this problem in a couple of meaningful ways:
- It gives team members the option to zoom in on their team or even their own role, so they have increased clarity about their own responsibilities.
- It gives team members the option to zoom out and get more context about what’s happening across the entire company, so they understand how they fit in.
Basically, collaboration tools—or even a suite of integrated tools—give employees a far more cohesive and connected view of their own work, the work of their team, and the work of the whole organization.
4. Build morale and culture
Clear roles and responsibilities? Better transparency and visibility? Improved productivity? Fewer miscommunications? Add it all together, and it’s a recipe for a happy, connected, and thriving team.
As it turns out, it’s not just the impacts of successful collaboration that improve employee satisfaction—collaboration itself plays a role, with research showing that collaboration increases employee happiness.
When your team can work together without all of the hoops and headaches, they’re able to strengthen trust, build better bonds, and genuinely enjoy working closely with each other.
5. Support a changing work environment
Gone are the days when people could lean over to the desk next to them and ask their team member a question. Pew Research shares that six in 10 U.S. workers who say their jobs can mainly be done from home are working from home all or most of the time.
Remote working isn’t a pandemic stopgap either, with many companies still opting for a hybrid approach that allows employees to choose where they work. 47% of organizations expect their use of hybrid teams to stay the same five years from now.
Companies now face the challenge of keeping teams connected—whether they’re sharing an office or located across the globe. Collaboration software pulls a team’s work together into easy-to-use solutions that can be accessed from anywhere and on a variety of devices.
If one team member wants to work from home, one wants to work in the office, and one wants to spend a few hours working from a coffee shop, they all have the same access to the information and resources they need.
Bring your team together with the right collaborative software
Collaborative productivity software is all about making it easier for your team to get work done together. These solutions centralize information, boost clarity, improve morale, provide flexibility, and increase productivity.
So now you know why companies are investing in these collaborative productivity tools, but which tools are worth the investment?
GoLinks makes collaboration and knowledge management a breeze by helping teams find and share information fast with memorable short links called go/links.
No more endless file folders or jumbled URLs—just straightforward, streamlined, and successful collaboration.
As an added bonus, GoLinks provides analytics that show your top-used SaaS tools, as well as your under-utilized tools. These insights allow you to evaluate and adjust spend so you know you’re investing in the right collaboration tools!
