8 good reasons to use collaborative work tools

Tired of repeated meetings? Too many emails to deal with? Where's that priority file? Collaborative work tools can solve all your problems, especially when it comes to project management. If you have any of the following 8 symptoms, you urgently need to use a collaborative working platform, morning, noon and night. If you don't already have an opinion on task management software, it's because you don't know what it is. Relax, we'll explain it all to you.
1. Your mailbox is overflowing
Email is great for sending a short message quickly, or sending a small file as an attachment. Where it gets tricky is when you want to share a much larger file, or when you end up with 12 versions of a document and can't remember which one you're looking for. If your mailbox also resembles a meeting room, sometimes with a meeting within the meeting, it's time to adopt a platform made for that.
2. You spend too much time in meetings
Can't get enough of acute meeting fatigue? Meeting after meeting, agenda often forgotten? The subject of the meeting has been changed at the last minute and you haven't brought the right file? Should we postpone? Are we getting tangled up internally? If you think your time is precious, and you don't want to waste it in endless or counter-productive meetings, then a collaborative working tool is for you.
3. You never know where your team stands
Who's done what? Who's ahead? Who's behind schedule? Who's having problems? Are the steps following each other correctly? Can we move on to the next phase of the project? Will we be able to meet the deadlines? Don't panic, you can improve the monitoring of your team's collaborative work: we'll look at this together below.
4. You don't know how to prioritize your tasks
Everything is always urgent and always yesterday. The acronym ASAP (as soon as possible) has almost become a customary courtesy in your company, like a "good morning"? What really needed to be dealt with urgently is still unfinished, and what could wait is already finished? Today's technology helps you to sort and prioritize. Incidentally, it also makes you more zen.
5. Sharing documents is a constraint
Sharing documents between colleagues is no picnic? Has it even become a gas factory within your department? Who has the right version? What do you mean, the document has been thrown in the garbage can? If you're seeing red and the lights are flashing, it's because you don't yet have an online workspace that simplifies this simple task.
6. Work organization needs to be reviewed
If, at your last meeting, the last thing on your mind sounded like "What do you mean you've all been doing the same tasks on your own?", then there's a big problem with the way your team organizes its work. Perhaps the notion of collaborative work escapes you? We'll get to the bottom of it, just be patient...
7. Project management is not your forte
Yes, we know: you shouldn't say so. Especially not to your boss. As for the team, let's not even talk about it: they think everything rests on your shoulders. If that's the case, it's best to equip yourself with a project management tool that allows you to better manage each project! We've got a tip for you a few lines down.
8. Productivity isn't up to scratch
You've reached the end of the list, and let's face it: you and your team can do better. There are a few areas for improvement. But how? How can we work better together as a team?
Let's open the doors to the wonderful world of collaborative working tools. The answers you're looking for are inside.
How collaborative working improves productivity
As we've seen from the 8 points we've just listed, the main challenges of teamwork can be summed up as follows:
- work management,
- team communication,
- work organization,
- information exchange and document sharing,
- project management.
What is collaborative working? Quite simply, it's a more efficient way of working as a team, where the notion of hierarchy is much less present. To achieve this, we need to use information and communication technologies: web-based tools that provide concrete answers in terms of uses. We're talking about various collaborative work tools that encourage interaction, cooperation and coordination with a view to productivity. More often than not, only a complete collaborative platform is capable of meeting all the challenges of collaborative working.
We also use the term task management software, or sometimes online project management software: the platform offers a virtual (online) workspace and various tools, which we call functionalities. The latter enable collaborative work to be better organized and monitored, communication to be improved and, ultimately, project management as a whole to be optimized. This type of software is also known as groupware, and brings together collaborative work tools that promote teamwork. Your team can also use collaborative platforms such as a corporate social network.
Which groupware tools should I use?
There's so much to choose from, and so many different answers! It all depends on your needs and expectations. We invite you to clearly define your needs and use our search engine to discover all the solutions that can help you improve collaborative working and teamwork. Common sense dictates that a messaging function should be present to enable private messages to be exchanged. The shared diary should also offer an overview that enables tasks to be better coordinated. To give you some food for thought, we're going to tell you about the 4 strong points of an intuitive solution, resolutely focused on collaborative working : Azendoo.
As each solution has its own qualities and shortcomings, depending on a team's apprehension of the tool and its needs, we prefer to focus on the major qualities of the collaborative platform, its differentiating assets:
- this project management software is easy to use and intuitive,
- you can view the progress of your own or your team's tasks at any time, enabling you to organize work efficiently,
- the time management feature helps you increase productivity for all,
- the unrivalled quality of the platform 's French support even offers tailor-made assistance.
Project management software promotes communication
Organize work better with visualization
Part of project management is planning tasks over time, for yourself or your colleagues. Visualizing the tasks in progress assigned to your team, or your own tasks, is essential for better organization. Azendoo offers you both possibilities: a personal view, as well as a team view.
Team view :
This is the collective view, common to every member of your collaborative project. To stay on top of a project's progress, the team view gives you an analytical view. You can instantly see which tasks have been completed and which are in progress. It's easy for the project manager to keep track of the team's work. They can organize work management much more efficiently, and monitor the project with complete peace of mind.
Your personal view:
With this view, you can see only those tasks that are personally assigned to you. You concentrate on your own work and organize yourself each day according to your personal workload.
Time management at the heart of the organization
The quality of the platform's French support
French speakers will appreciate this: the application, which in our opinion competes with corporate social networks, is available in French. Cocorico!
Because the Azendoo team provides in-depth support:
- the presence of a French support team is so rare that we'd like to highlight it,
- various educational tools to help you discover the tool (demonstration videos, videoconferencing, tutorials on the website, etc.),
- the availability of the entire team, so you can get answers 7 days a week,
- the possibility of intervening on your site for a hands-on session demonstrates the quality of our service.
To illustrate the attentiveness and quality of the team's support, there's nothing like a testimonial from a satisfied customer. AG2R expressed the need for support in its digital transformation, and selected Azendoo for the quality of its collaborative work tools. The platform sent a consultant-animator to help its customer's staff get to grips with and use the tool: learning by doing reassures and motivates teams! Watch AG2R's short testimonial (4 min) on Azendoo's support in the video below:
Where are you in your project management?
Do your current management tools no longer suit you? Do you want to instill a team dynamic within your department and simplify sharing? Do you want to coordinate work and cooperate seamlessly? Are you looking for productivity? What are your own good reasons for adopting a platform like Azendoo?
Article translated from French