How Do Businesses Resolve Their Collaboration Challenges? Here's What They Told Us.

Organising your work in the age of distractions can be a difficult task, but however challenging it may be, it still gets done. We've asked business owners internationally what the biggest challenge they are facing when organising their work is, and these four were kind enough to answer our query. Here's what we've found out.

         Eric Ebert from Lookeen

As a working professional in a start-up in Germany, I can confirm that we use a lot of tools to organise our daily work. The company that I work for is a global leader in search technology with a decentralized workforce. 

Tools that we use on a daily basis are:

-Lookeen for email and desktop searches, it's able to search inside attachments, tasks, calendar in Outlook, as well as index multiple file types for improved file search. (full disclosure, this is our product) 

-Trello for task managment, organized into teams or projects... this is our daily work plan. 

-Skype for phone and short messaging among co-workers (I've also used the desktop sharing feature with customers to troubleshoot problems) 

-Google Docs for team collaboration and project tracking 

    Alex Makin from Syneka Marketing

We utilise software that enhances our efficiency and client delivery.

We are firm believers in open source and utilise Linux (Zentyal) for our file server. The server includes a VPN to enable staff to securely access our internal network when remote. In addition, we use OpenChange, which provides Exchange functionality, including calendar and email. The calendar in particular has assisted in managing staff time and meeting allocations. 

In regard to project management and customer contact, we use vTigerCRM. The system is opensource and incorporates invoices, project tracking and customer contact. We provide a customer portal that enables our clients to track project outcomes. 

      Bryan West from Fortress Learning

We have 18 staff, located across 3 Australian states and 4 countries. The google suite is important to our workflow management, and enables collaboration.

But, the key to making our work efficient is not the presence of these remarkable tools, but clear processes that ensure that people use them in a way that drives efficiency Tweet

Otherwise, without organisation-wide expectations, it can end up as a Tower of Babel with people presuming that their own way of using such a tool is the same as others'.

      Michelle Tupy from Clever Streak

As a manager of multiple social media accounts, I find the use of social media management software such as Buffer or Hootsuite helps. I communicate with my manager via Facebook or email and we both upload consecutively to Hootsuite or Buffer - depending on what we are using at the time. We live in different locations so we need to be organised online. We can just upload, set the time for publication and get on with the rest of the tasks. 

This is important to us.

What do you think? How do you solve collaboration challenges within your company? We will continue updating our survey, so if you would like to participate, feel free to leave a comment below.