Choosing the Best Collaboration Tools for Your Small Business

Remote work and a need to increase productivity and organizational agility are among the factors prompting small businesses to adapt cloud-based collaboration tools.

While the specifics vary from tool to tool, online collaboration helps small business teams exchange ideas, manage tasks and projects, and serve customers more efficiently and securely. And because collaboration tools store data and team updates in the cloud, team members can access data from nearly anywhere.

Collaboration in the Cloud

The broad category of online collaboration includes several capabilities, with many platforms offering a combination of tools to help teams work together and exchange updates. Some of the most valuable capabilities for small business users include:

• Communications. This can be videoconferences, online chats, screen-sharing, voice calls or combinations of those tools in a unified platform. Some platforms include online whiteboards where members can exchange ideas during remote brainstorming sessions.
• File sharing and document management. Depending on the tool, users can either transfer documents securely, or they can edit an online file (including working together at the same time). These tools offer an alternative to exchanging documents by email.
• Project and task management. Team members can easily see how much progress has been made on a given project, who’s doing what, and remaining tasks that need to be completed.

The benefits of cloud-based collaboration tools for small businesses include:

• Productivity gains. Team members can spend more time working together, or collaborating with clients and business partners to get work done and make decisions faster.
• Stronger project management. Team members can share calendars, status updates, files and outstanding tasks to everyone, and they can monitor progress and share ideas easily. Some tools include Gantt charts or timelines.
• Better schedule management. Teams can set up meetings with only a couple of clicks. Or, by using the other communication tools, potentially reduce the number of meetings they hold.
• More effective communications. Some tools allow companies to set up project-specific message boards or chat channels so team members can exchange ideas without having to look for messages in their crowded email inboxes.
• Secure file-sharing and storage. Maintaining documents in secure cloud vaults is safer and more effective than exchanging them via email and potentially being unsure about which version of a file is the latest.
• Effective time tracking. If you bill clients by the hour, tracking how much time workers spend on behalf of a project is clearly critical to maintaining your company’s billing and cash flow.

Evaluating Tools

If you are considering adopting or expanding your use of online collaboration tools, a good place to start is the productivity tools you are already using. For example, your word processing, spreadsheets and presentation tools may have online components that allow you to create and share work remotely without investing in additional software.

It’s also important to understand your needs and which features you are most likely to take advantage of. If your primary focus is communicating with team members, contractors and customers remotely, a messaging or video conferencing tool could be your best bet.

Other tools are based around project management and file-sharing capabilities, so understanding what features you are most interested in will help dictate which tools you try or adopt first.

Popular collaboration tools include Monday.com, Asana, Slack, Trello and others.