Collaboration
The collaboration secrets of high-performing teams
Wherever, Whenever: Creating High-Performing Teams
Strong collaboration can profoundly affect the outcome of any organisation. When groups of people, often from diverse locations and roles, share ideas and knowledge, something special happens. The best-performing teams don’t happen by chance, and today’s technology supports teams to achieve more than ever before.
High-performance organisations are up to 5.5 times more likely than lower performers to recognise and reward effective collaboration by individuals, teams and leaders*.
Mobility
Today’s teams may work in different states or countries, even in different time zones, but modern, cloud-based collaboration solutions support every worker, in any location, on any device. From mining sites and schools to hospitals and offices, we create a secure user experience that invites contributions from everyone. Using tools such as video conferencing, shared collaboration spaces, virtual whiteboards and instant messaging, our customers work more effectively, anytime, anywhere. Even when a team member leaves, their input is preserved, and their knowledge doesn’t depart with them.
Security and Governance
Driven by different business units, or even external parties, collaboration solutions can be easily adopted by different groups to solve immediate problems – but this creates new challenges. Unsanctioned apps may be used for sensitive customer data or the organisation’s intellectual property, potentially threatening data compliance efforts. Visibility of data can be obscured, making it difficult to secure. Creating a well-designed collaboration experience reduces the potential for your staff to adopt unsanctioned shadow IT solutions and helps to keep users and data safe.
When approaching collaboration decisions, there are some important governance questions that must be asked:
- Do we have an appropriate level of security to protect our users? Are our third-party partners also protected?
- Can we recover of data in the event of a disaster such as a CryptoLocker attack?
- Is it even appropriate to invite third-parties to collaborate at all?
- Is there a naming convention?
- What will you allow to be shared, and how will your data be protected?
- What is the policy on appropriate behaviour and content?
- How do you avoid a proliferation of collaboration sites and solutions?
- What happens to a site when you finish with it? How does the data get backed up and the site archived?
A positive approach to collaboration governance reduces the possibility of data breach or reputation damage if proactive steps are taken in advance to secure and protect your valuable corporate intellectual property.
It’s no secret that collaboration is critical to a company’s success.
Collaboration platforms are on the rise, and have become inherent to business operations. Recent events have led to a mad dash for enterprises and schools to incorporate collaboration platforms in order to maintain business continuity and work towards a new hybrid workplace. While it’s impossible to define exactly what the new hybrid workplace will look like, there’s no contesting that collaboration solutions are here to stay.
76% of employees report the desire to want to continue working from home1. Additionally, current predictions hold that by 2024 75% of meetings will be virtual2. With such significant changes to modern day ways of working, honing the collaboration solutions within your organisation is essential in the journey to the modern workplace.
Collaboration Platforms: Know your options
Empower teams to come together rapidly across organisational and geographical boundaries on easily-accessible and intuitive collaboration platforms. Whether it’s file-sharing, chatting, digital whiteboards, video conferencing or screen-sharing, you’ll streamline your work systems and drive results. To help you make the right decision for your organisation’s needs, we’ve created a comparison infographic to compare all of the business-critical features of three leading platforms – Cisco Webex, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
Cisco Webex
A complete, cloud-based collaboration solution designed for simplicity, Cisco Webex brings people together into ‘spaces’ – virtual rooms that contain messages, meetings, contacts, documents and drawings. Free to download, easy to implement and quick to deliver – see how easy it is to love how you work.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams is a complete chat and online meetings solution. You can get someone’s attention, share files effortlessly, and kick-off conversations via video or call. Microsoft Teams is just one part of the Office 365 suite, and integrates seamlessly with your favourite Office applications, email, calendars and SharePoint – all the tools your teams need to get work done.
Collaboration hardware for anywhere
Consider the ease of joining a video meeting with one click, inviting others in an instant, capturing thoughts on a team board, and seamlessly sharing content. Ultramodern meeting devices that battle eye strain, video fatigue and external noise are becoming popular choices to transform the humble meeting room into a video-enabled collaboration space, spanning a hybrid workforce.
Smart Boards
Utilise an all-in-one digital whiteboard, ideal for co-creation between employees in both physical rooms and virtual spaces.
Meeting Rooms
Kit out your meeting spaces with everything you need to run focused, seamless video meetings for employees in the office.
Personal
The same personal video and headphone devices that combat video fatigue and external noise in the office are perfect for the home office.
Security and Governance
While collaboration platforms provide a business solution for communication, they can inadvertently create security problems that may be overlooked in the haste to incorporate collaboration solutions.
When developing a comprehensive strategy to encompass your collaboration platform governance, security and adoption, these are some important questions to ask:
- Does the platform use end-to-end encryption?
- Can the platform support single sign-on?
- Will the user have granular control to determine role-based permissions?
- How does the vendor protect user data?
IT teams need to be able to balance controls with security and risk while supporting instant communication and collaboration.
Augmented and Virtual Reality
Once futuristic concepts, augmented reality (AR), and its close relative, virtual reality (VR) are making waves across industries. Solutions incorporating these immersive technologies are increasingly available as technology companies attempt to meet our growing need to interact with each other from afar.
Today, you can create adaptive experiences driven by a user’s natural response in the moment to take training, teaching, creation and collaboration to the next level.
Watch Data#3’s HP Device Specialist take the HP Reverb G2 Headset and HP Z Backpack for a spin, exploring what’s possible with HP’s VR equipment in the classroom.
Explore HP’s latest VR fleet:
Collaboration in a COVID-19 World
For your employees, new policies implementing a risk-free return to office will be an expectation of the ‘new normal’. Even as restrictions begin to ease, certain standards will need to be upheld in today’s new hybrid work environments.
As employees begin to migrate back to the physical office space, these considerations will need to be accounted for:
- Smart scheduling systems that can adjust meeting times to monitor the number of people in the building and coordinate meeting room and hot desk occupancy.
- “Bring your own devices” that enable a seamless office to home, and vies versa, transition.
- In-room devices that incorporate voice activation and wireless presentation features for zero-touch meetings.
- Video devices that monitor and record the number of people physically present in a meeting room and uphold scheduled cleaning in between meetings.
Many collaboration devices have already confronted these business challenges. Make your collaboration solutions work for you when adapting your office environment to new ways of working. When used properly, your business collaboration solution can enable not just a safe workforce, but a productive one.
Customer Story: Melbourne City Mission
Read how Melbourne City Mission leverages innovative collaboration solution to help prepare at-risk students for future employment.
“The kids will now hold video conferences using Microsoft Teams, collaborate using OneNote, create slides in PowerPoint, all the best tools for business; we are taking away that level of disadvantage, and giving our students what others in any world-class school would have.”
Tim Knowles, Principal, The Hester Hornbrook Academy
Not sure where to start?
Every business is different. Your organisation needs it’s own, tailored collaboration strategy. Data#3 can help you to plan, select and implement the right collaboration solution, no matter where you are in your collaboration journey. Contact us to review your deploy assist options for Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams, or to request a teamwork assessment.
Contact a Collaboration Specialist
1. (2020). Work From Home Experience Survey Results. [Online] Available at: https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/global-work-from-home-experience-surveywww.i4cp.com
2. Gartner (2020). Gartner Says Worldwide End-User Cloud-based Web Conferencing Solutions Will Grow Nearly 25% in 2020. [Online] Available at:https://www.gartner.com/
