Online Collaboration For The Enterprise
September 15th, 2010 | 
Author: Online Collaboration for the Enterprise
Executives and department heads of large enterprise companies today are faced with a bigger challenge than ever before. In huge companies of thousands + employees and the lightning paced real-time availability of information on the Web, organizing all online communication, team members, plans, projects, tasks and company data in an organized manner seems nearly impossible.
Some enterprise companies turn to Microsoft SharePoint as the solution – but not only is SharePoint extremely expensive, but it takes months of planning, deployment and generous IT resources.
Most companies, especially with the economic landscape today, don’t have that kind of budget, time or manpower to spare.
Luckily, there are alternative online collaboration solutions for the enterprise. Alternatives offer collaboration and online project management at lower costs, easier and shorter deployment times, and greater user-friendliness so even the most non-tech savvy members of a corporation (because there are bound to be some within large companies) can adopt and begin using the solution immediately.
Two of the biggest ways that Online Collaboration can help the Enterprise:
First solution: Workflows –
In large companies, there are certain tasks that need to be carried out on a regular basis. Individually, they might only take a couple minutes to complete, but when you’re doing them ten, twenty, fifty times a day, the minutes add up to days and weeks of precious time “wasted”.
The answer? Workflows. With online collaboration solutions like Central Desktop, you can create workflow triggers, and when activated, each trigger onsets an automatic sequence of preconfigured steps or actions.
Here’s a real life example – a property management group set up a workflow so that every time a tenant submits a work order request (that’s the trigger), an email is automatically sent to an independent contractor with the details and location of the work order request. The tenant is then sent back an automatic email letting him or her know when the work order was placed and when it will be filled. The property management group saves thousands a year in phone bills and time saved from just that simple workflow.
Second solution: Intranets –
Every enterprise company probably already has a crude form of Intranet set up already, mainly to share communication and important files. But full Intranet solutions offer rich features like document management, online calendars, task management, customer portals, extranets, contact management, client management and project management that allow team members to share schedules, assignments, project updates and more.
Intranets take team communication to a whole other level, by connecting every single department, independent contractor, vendor and partner of the company in a secure online platform. Companies find that this open, transparent infrastructure promotes hard work, teamwork and productivity.
Those are only two of the ways in which enterprise companies are using online collaboration. The days of disorganized and chaotic enterprise management are long gone – get started with enterprise online collaboration today!
Grace Kang is a copywriter for Central Desktop, an online collaboration software and web based project management company. For more information on how smart businesses are using collaboration software to improve productivity and success, visit Central Desktop.
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