It seems like everyone today is talking about how much they prefer message-based collaboration tools to email. Any product category that becomes so popular, so quickly is always worth giving some close consideration to. Internal office communication software has certainly been an important trend in recent years. In fact, many businesses are seeing serious improvements in productivity when they adopt easy-to-use, flexible platforms that make it a breeze connect in real time with your teammates. Organizations across industries have been migrating to them to enable better communication collaboration.
But how do you know which tool is the best for your enterprise? Here are some questions you should ask:
Scalability: Will the tool work with an organization of your size?
Small businesses have different requirements for the applications they use. Midsize and large enterprise, on the other hand, need to think about stability and the track record of the service provider they choose to work with for any toolset. While innovation is essential to keep up with the changing marketplace, it’s often safer for new technologies to be incorporated within proven solutions.
Larger businesses also need to consider how well a given solution will scale throughout their organization. Will a particular tool work with thousands of employees, or is it geared more towards smaller, more flexible organizational structures? Communication tools like Slack get a lot of buzz, but the track record of large enterprise deployment is not there. Alternatively, a solution like Cisco Spark exists with a time-tested ecosystem that supports mid-market to Fortune 100 businesses with their networking and unified communication needs. Consider the differences when making your decision.
Versatility: How will the tool be implemented and who will use it?
In some cases, a communication tool will only be useful for a certain subset of employees, a single department, or even just a project team. In these cases, a lightweight solution with less wide-ranging impact across an organization may be a fine choice. When rolling out a tool to a small portion of employees, more experimentation is possible and overall reliability is less critical. An outage will only affect a limited number of employees, not your entire operations.
Still, it’s important to ask whether a particular collaboration tool will be viable for continued expansion throughout the organization, helping to improve overall communication within a business. Here, the question of scalability comes back into play. Businesses should determine a set of use cases for the collaboration tool in order to determine how it will be deployed initially as well how its use may evolve over time. If you choose a platform that lacks scalability, you may find yourself facing a migration to a new tool down the line. This will lead to time-consuming mess that leaves all impacted parties frustrated. You need to understand how widely the tool will be implemented, but also look ahead to anticipate future needs.
Existing Ecosystems: How will the tool integrate into your business’s infrastructure?
Deploying new tools can often involve complicated integrations. If a tool doesn’t work with your existing communication solutions, then it may require employees to perform similar actions in different applications, depending on whom they’re communicating with. his process of repeating steps can be very frustrating.
Some collaboration tools solve a few of these problems by integrating with pre-existing communication systems. The Cisco ecosystem is a good example: their collaboration tool, Cisco Spark, works with existing Cisco unified communication services as well as conferencing systems like WebEx. By integrating these systems, employees can call landlines or connect to WebEx meetings from within the app. This simplifies day-to-day use and increases the speed of collaboration. Seamlessly move from chatting within the app to starting a meeting that incorporates not only internal Spark users but also WebEx users.
Functionality: What features are most valuable to your organization?
Besides organizational concerns, the benefits of using one tool over another come down to the features. While many collaborative tools offer numerous add-ons or integration, you should consider native features first because they indicate the areas that the developer is most closely focusing their efforts. It’s not likely that these core features will suffer compatibility problems down the line or be phased out completely. Most collaboration tools are built upon a chat interface arranged into groups (“workspaces”, “rooms”, “channels”, “teams”) ranging from 1-on-1 interactions to those that include staff from entire departments. For example, Slack, at its core, is a message-based email replacement app, and for some businesses, this alone may be a compelling proposition.
Timeframe: How quickly do you need a solution, and how long do you want it to last?
In thinking about the above questions, you should also consider how long you want a particular solution to endure. Some organizations may be looking for a project-specific solution. In most cases, though, a long-term approach makes more sense, as the advantages of increase collaboration grow over time. If you want to choose a tool that will endure and help your organization evolve, look at the company behind it, their track record, and the technology at their disposal.
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