Original Post by Joshua Erwin
Today’s hyper-connected workplace is moving faster than ever before. It is truly a digital workplace, where the speed of information—and how that information gets shared across an organization—is paramount to that organization’s success.
Businesses are constantly looking to optimize communication and collaboration. And today, we’re seeing an increasing trend towards streamlining collaboration by turning to all-in-one tools, combining traditionally disparate functionality like audio, video and web conferencing into one single, unified experience. Rather than forcing employees to constantly shift between different communication mediums, all-in-one collaboration centralizes the experience and gives them the freedom to meet when, where and—most importantly—how they want.
Let’s take a look at why all-in-one collaboration is quickly becoming the go-to solution for IT departments supporting the new digital workplace:
Cost Savings: All-in-one collaboration comes with considerable cost savings, and I’m not just talking about line items on your budget. While it’s true that bundling all of these solutions together can ultimately lead to lower conferencing costs, there’s also significant time and productivity savings that can be easy to overlook.
For starters, dealing with a single vendor rather than multiple ones saves your IT department valuable time, both when interacting with the vendor itself and also lowering the time dedicated to support and maintenance. With a single contact for support needs, IT can spend more time fixing problems and less time wrangling external contacts. It’s also much quicker to deploy and ramp up a single tool rather than multiple ones.
And finally, all-in-one collaboration allows your employees to focus less on the technology itself and more on the value that the technology creates. Instead of juggling multiple tools, they can focus on a single user experience, getting into meetings faster and with less technical difficulties.
While it may seem small to save a few minutes here and there, multiply that by the number of employees and the number of meetings those employees are having, and you’ll soon see an exponential reduction in wasted time which ultimately translates to wasted cost.
Smaller Learning Curve: One of the reasons why only 14% of software deployments are considered by IT leaders to be successful is that workers are hesitant to adopt new tools. They have established workflows, a workplace inertia of sorts that any new software has to overcome by offering compelling, easy-to-understand value.
It’s vital that the learning curve for any new software is minimized in order to drive adoption. And by reducing the number of tools an employee has to learn through all-in-collaboration, you can instantly improve employee productivity and drive those ever-important adoption numbers, allowing your organization to reap the benefits of improved collaboration while also improving ROI.
Versatility and Flexibility: In a recent survey,it was found that 79% of knowledge worker respondents had the ability to work remotely at least one day a week. Flexible work is much more than a trend; it’s the future of the digital workplace where employees have the freedom to work where and how they choose.
All-in-one collaboration tools empower this remote work generation, giving them the freedom to meet however works best for them. Every employee has different preferences when it comes to collaborating. Some always turn their webcams on, some prefer to forgo the camera for an audio-only experience while still others aren’t comfortable without a slide deck to share via the web.
By combining all of these experiences into one tool, you can streamline workflows while simultaneously empowering your employees with improved freedom, flexibility and productivity.
Collaboration is the cornerstone of the digital workplace. By providing more efficient, intuitive tools, the IT department can provide tangible value across each and every department in their organization, driving business results and ultimately, business growth.
For more information on buying, deploying and nurturing collaboration within your organization click here!
