Ideally, a collaboration platform serves as a hub, organizing information and connections around employees’ unique roles in the company. It provides easy access to data and functions that users need for their job, and displays relevant information in a convenient dashboard-like interface.
But too often, a company’s collaboration platform is little more than a shared drive on the Internet. It doesn’t understand users’ roles, job responsibilities or contacts. In other words, the platform isn’t very smart.
So how do you choose the right collaboration platform for your organization? While factors such as company culture, employee demographics and existing technology infrastructure vary, organizations often run into trouble when they try to implement a platform without first having an understanding of the problem they want to solve through better collaboration. Only by placing the problem in context it is possible to frame the issue properly and develop a useful collaboration strategy.
Start with an understanding and agreement on the problems in your organization, and identify one or more aspects or issues that collaboration helps to resolve. Once you have the problem identified and some baseline education on what’s available, then you’re ready to start mapping your problems to the capabilities of these tools in a more generic sense.
For example, let’s say that your problem is communication with external clients. Clients keep complaining that they’re left in the dark. After you raise awareness of the problem internally, you’re prepared to research the available collaboration solutions and see how well they would solve your client communication problem.
By framing a collaboration strategy in basic, concrete terms, people start to understand and internalize how a given platform improves their workflow and communication. If you skip this problem-solving approach and just talk about the features and functions that a collaboration platform offers, the solution is only going to appeal to the small minority of early adopters in your company.
Even with careful research and a sound collaboration strategy, you can’t be 100 percent prepared when rolling out a new platform across the organization. So it’s always a smart idea to start with a pilot program as a way to test and tailor the system to your company’s needs.
A good collaboration platform puts in front of people information that’s essential to their jobs without overwhelming them and creating more distractions. A pilot project is great for testing what works and what doesn’t, and deciding which features you need to turn on and which to turn off if they’re not useful. Such projects also help create some buzz, interest and internal advocates around the platform.
When it comes to choosing the right collaboration platform, approach this task from a communication mindset, and not as simple software selection. The common thread through every human interaction is communication, whether you’re talking about a marriage, a project team or an organization as a whole. In the end, a successful collaboration platform is all about connecting people and communication.
