Workforce Collaboration Has Arrived and Your People Will Love it

The news that Microsoft Teams will challenge cloud collaboration providers Slack and Workplace by Facebook piqued our interest. It is gratifying to see that what once required multiple software applications now gives us unified tools we love to use.

Slack surpassed 3 million daily users in May. Facebook boasts over 1,000 companies on its platform, and Teams is or will be integrated into Microsoft’s Office 365 platforms for its millions of cloud users. There are dozens of cloud collaboration platforms on the market, but we think these three will dominate for the next couple of years. 

In the enterprise market, Cisco continues to dominate over Microsoft and Verizon, as shown in the chart on the
right.

Markets and Markets estimates the total collaboration software market will be $70.61 Billion by 2019.

What we find most exciting in cloud collaboration platforms is their easy extensibility. Built-in APIs are the rule. Plugins and bots can perform almost any business function, or, if you like, you can build your own.

Built for Teams

Collaboration software is not right for every business, but for enterprises which use a team- or project-based approach, vendors have finally delivered tools built for the way people work. Vendors still build most enterprise software for individuals, and users most often have to go to another application to collaborate. Now, we can bring enterprise tools into the collaboration platform, and aggregation of communication tools is its most powerful feature.

Unify Your Communications

Employees today have a lot of options: instant messaging, email, phone, and video. But when employees use multiple types of communication, they are likely to miss things. Cloud collaboration tools can handle all team communications in a single place. Our demo of Microsoft teams showed us how to conduct a video meeting with several people at once, each in a different location.

Integrate Document Management

Many organization have several document management platforms. The flexibility of teams and topics in Slack, Teams, and Workplace make it easy to manage all of your document sharing on a single platform. You can also integrate your existing document libraries with any of the collaboration platforms.

Eliminate Tedious and Expensive In-Person Meetings

People can collaborate on a project without meetings. Team members can make their contributions whenever and wherever they are available, Notifications and messages can go out to everyone at once. If you do meet using phones, chat, or video, the software can save a transcript.

Integrate Advanced Telephone Features

There are many new phone features available, especially for  VoIP systems. You can integrate mobile phones with VoIP so rather than triggering voicemail, unanswered calls can be sent to mobile.

The Future is Here

The technology already exists to create better collaboration. Sign up for free trials or demos to find out which platform is best for you. So far, we have liked every one we’ve tried.

Pixentia is a full-service technology company dedicated to helping clients solve business problems, improve the capability of their people, and achieve better results.