Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Workforce Collaboration

Is your company using tools for allowing the staff to work more efficiently? If not, why not? Surely getting more out of the same team make good sense.

But is it that easy do?
There are now a number of software and web-based products & services that allow sets of individuals to connect & collaborate together to become more productive or useful.

1. Google Applications:
Do you find that Microsoft Office is too expensive, especially when you have more than one PC in different locations?
Do you find yourself using only 20% of the functionality in Word & Excel most of the time?
Do you find upgrading your Office suite a paid every time a new version comes along?
Do you want several members of the same team to view and edit the sme document, regardless of location?

Well.... not only does Google make its own word processor, spreadsheet, calendar and other applications available online, it provides them for free for individual use. It also charges just £25 per user license for large organisations to utilise the Premium version. Combining the useful functionality of most popular office applications, plus the ability for multiple users to share and work on documents, companies such as L'Oreal and General Electric are currently evaluating its usefulness as an MS Office replacement.
Take a look at http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/06/24/231178/google-apps-makes-its-way-into-big-business.htm for more information about it.

2. Basecamp:
This is a web-based service that allows multiple-user collaboration on a project. Its a growing suite of applications that provides: plans, task break-downs and areas for sharing ideas, Basecamp is very useful way to run projects, especially if you have a distributed or virtual team.

Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication
http://www.basecamphq.com/

Note:
This tool has been developed by 37 signals, who have also produced http://www.highrisehq.com, an Online contact manager and simple CRM application (more on this when I get my hands on it)

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