Now that major businesses have shifted their organizations’ operations from office to home, work-from-home has leaped forward towards setting a trend of the new normal. Employees have started to adopt the new office setting at their homes, however, with a feeling of missing the physical presence to discuss quick matters, simple follow-ups from colleagues, brainstorming sessions, and a lot more.
Consequently, it has become more inevitable than ever to have the right collaboration tools installed on your employees’ systems that not only help them to connect with other employees with ease but also improving their productivity and efficiency, while working from home.
The following tips are just the tip of the iceberg as to how businesses can choose the right software to achieve their overall organizational goals.
1. Talk to your employees
Although evaluating the features of the collaboration software solutions is vital before arriving at a decision, it is also important to loop in the end-users who are going to be the actual rigorous users of the software.
Hence, the biggest factor is to survey your employees and ask them about their challenges whether they need the software for meetings or video calls, or sharing files, messaging, etc. Involving them will ensure that they will have acceptance and alignment when you buy the software for them.
It will also help you to streamline the training and implementation process since your employees would be well-aware of the objectives of the tool. This is also crucial from a financial standpoint, since if your employees are not making the best out of the software, worse, if they aren’t using it, then it’s an investment gone wrong.
2. Choose features that align with your business goals
Before buying the software solution, you need to decide what’s the outcome of the implementation of the new software. Companies have different goals from their collaboration software solution, such as allowing employees to connect with each other easily, or providing excellent customer service.
Some collaboration tools provide features such as make calls from any location, take calls on work numbers. Such features ensure employees that they can take customer calls from anywhere, even without WiFi access.
While, for some companies, cost-effective solutions would be their primary objective. So, here you can take a look at what you already have at your perusal and maybe, buy just a few add-ons. For example, if you Have Microsoft 365, why not add Microsoft Teams in the suite or Google video. These are very robust solutions.
3. Examine the video conferencing feature of the software
While choosing the collaboration software, some companies are specifically interested in the video conferencing feature of the software. They might look at its ease of use, or video quality, or any other factor.
For example, Microsoft Teams is user-friendly in terms of allowing the employees to use the feature with ease.
Interested to know more about how you can incorporate Teams with your existing infrastructure? Let’s Talk.
While some companies may look for a robust solution such as breakout rooms, Q&A sessions, live polling, etc. However, the best video conferencing software is the one with the best video quality. If it incorporates 4K video, nothing like it.
4. Check other collaboration features
You might also want to consider other collaboration features in the software such as messaging or file-sharing options. They should be such that align with your cloud solutions to ensure seamless communication amongst employees.
For example, for file sharing, Microsoft OneDrive is easily compatible with Microsoft Teams.
vTech Solution, Inc. is a Managed IT Services firm, based out of Washington, DC, with a primary focus on IT Consulting and Professional Services. vTech endeavors to overcome the challenges and opportunities confronting private and government sectors by incorporating the latest IT solutions, complete with industry best practices.
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