When you start out in the world of work, there are several steps to take to successfully climb the ladder. Steps that are each more important than the last and that every entrepreneur must know.
The first step is obviously to go digital in order to quickly move on to creating an effective and professional website and SEO optimized. The second is to lead your team upwards by promoting a horizontal working method and the last is to develop your company together.
We hope you have already taken the first step, if not, do it quickly. If you are well on the second, this article is for you. It brings together 5 collaborative tools to know to boost your productivity.
What is a good collaborative tool?
A collaborative tool worthy of the name must:
- enable remote communication
- promote horizontal work
- allow live exchange
- provide centralized and simultaneous access to information
- allow to follow actions in real time
- allow to synchronize all actions
- provide total mobility
Slack – To improve internal communication
The reality
La bonne internal communication is one of the keys to the successful development of a business. Unfortunately, it is difficult to ensure the proper transmission of information to your entire team. Very often, the information ends up distorted, the transmission is not ensured… In short, we play Chinese whispers and it becomes a real mess.
Email boxes are becoming saturated and if unfortunately we decide to use Facebook to benefit from its instant messaging, we quickly lose concentration. Not to mention that it is not necessarily practical to share documents, links and files on Facebook.
The solution
A tool that combines the useful features of a classic messaging and a instant messaging.
Since its launch, the popularity of this tool has been growing steadily and for good reason, it allows you to gain in productivity, efficiency and time.
It gives you the ability to create a internal private discussion space. Like on Facebook, you can create conversation groups or communicate directly with one of the people who are members of your company's Slack.
Slack allows you to exchange in real time. Conversations, sharing of documents, images, links.
With Slack, no more internal emails, you can transmit information and discuss it in real time with your entire team or just the people concerned.
It is finally possible to centralize your communications !
The most? A HISTORY is stored by Slack, allowing you to find key messages or documents. Wait, there's more! On Slack, videoconferences are possible!
Even better: the tool is available in its web version but also via its desktop application and screen. To be efficient anywhere and at any time.
Google Drive – Take your documents everywhere
The reality
Although in theory the document sharing should not be an obstacle to the productivity of a company, in practice, it is. When several people have to work on it, a single document can be shared several times in several versions, which is quite normal since the document is shared after each modification. The problem, in addition to the accumulation of emails, is that it happens far too often to get the wrong document and work on an outdated version of it. A finding that blocks the productivity and efficiency of a team.
The solution
The ideal would therefore be to be able to work on a evolving document and whose modifications are visible to all collaborators, in real time. Thus, no gearing of the document according to the versions.
This solution exists and it's called Google Drive. A tool made by Google whose popularity leads us to believe that you know it. On the other hand, do you know why it is absolutely necessary to use it as a collaborative tool? Why is using it an excellent idea? We'll enlighten you!
As you probably know, Google Drive is a service that allows you to create and share various documents: Google Docs, Google Sheets or Google Slides.
The advantage of this tool is that it allows several people toedit the same document at the same time, that he automatically saves the changes made and that he stores right away.
So you can create new documents online whenever you want, you can share them with the people of your choice, giving them the right or not to modify them. With this tool, you will never again work on the wrong version of a document since the recordings are done automatically.
Not happy with the latest version of a document? That's okay, Google Drive keeps a document history since its creation, you just need to go back in the thread of this history and restore the version that suits you.
The only downside: Having a Google account is mandatory. But is it really a downside?
Sleep as an Droid – To-do lists to share
The reality
Sometimes theassignment of tasks within a team leaves room for misunderstandings and this impacts its productivity. Who should do what? Making regular points to define and distribute tasks also takes time, sometimes too much time.
The solution
To-do lists shareable ! With Wunderlist, create and share as many to-do items as you want.
So, no more regular points reserved for the distribution of tasks. You just have to create and send a to-do to the people concerned.
No more misunderstandings, everyone knows what they have to do. And if there are any clarifications to ask, just start a chat about a task. Practical, right?
Even more practical: Wunderlist promotes the mobility. In addition to being able to send to-do lists and therefore share remote work, you have access to a online version as well as desktop and mobile applications. Your to-do items, always in your pocket!
MindMeister – Facilitate brainstorming
The reality
The brainstorming are very useful. They allow the hatching of new ideas all equally innovative and good. But brainstorming takes time. Meeting every two weeks to discuss a topic requires freeing up 30 minutes to 1 hour of everyone's time. In addition, some ideas, although excellent, are hard to explain simply. But should we abandon brainstorming for all that?
The solution
The answer is no! You just need to get started with MindMeister, a tool to “visualize your thoughts.”
This tool offers to create mental maps that is, graphic representations of your ideas.
This allows to organize ideas, of them sharing easily and make them understandable for everyone. It is well known: visuals help understanding.
To facilitate the creation of mind maps, the tool offers predefined templates. Brainstorming, Project Plan, To Do list, Org Chart, Meeting and many more in the paid version.
The only downside: You have to upgrade to the paid version to use it as a truly collaborative tool; add images to your mind maps and access a chat.
What's better than a good brainstorming session to encourage horizontal work?
Ludus for team – Build your presentations together
The reality
When a presentation arrives, a person is responsible for create the support. Very often she has it validated by other professionals who will each have a different approach; UX, Marketing, etc. In this way, everyone will have contributed their knowledge and the presentation will be complete. At least, in theory.
In practice, this requires a lot of sending documents back and forth between different members of a team. Here again, it happens that the wrong version is used and what should have been simple ends up in total chaos. Result? We abandon the collaborative approach. But is this the right solution?
The solution
Of course not! The right solution is to use a tool made to create and work on slides with several people.
This tool is Ludus! An easy-to-use tool that presents in a comprehensive manner the same features as PowerPoint.
Create a presentation, name it, add images, videos and don't forget to customize the typography and graphic elements. In short, be creative !
Creation is not your strong point? It doesn't matter, focus on what you can bring to the presentation and let your colleagues take care of bringing their expertise! With Ludus you all work on one and the same document, at the same time.
Consequences? A gain of time, productivity and successful presentations !
The tour of the 5 collaborative tools that you absolutely must know is over. But since we are concerned about your success, we offer you one last one. Do you remember, in the introduction we told you about three steps? This tool will allow you to engage in your third step while remaining in thecollaborative spirit.
We present to you The 100 top !
A site that brings together more than 100 SEO techniques approved by experts. What makes this tool extraordinary? You can too make your contribution and share your SEO techniques with the community. What could be more collaborative and useful?
