A recent survey of New Year’s resolutions found that the number-one resolution is to get organized. Sixty-one percent of those polled pledged to keep their business more organized in the new year. If you have a similar resolution, here are some ideas to improve organization. Read more »
While it would be wrong to suggest that there are fashions in collaboration tools — you don’t have to have the latest tool to walk down the runway — there are certainly trends that are going to impact the tools we use in the coming year. Read more »
How do companies get their massive distributive work forces to innovate and collaborate when they’re thousands of miles apart? For social enterprise company Moxie Software and design firm IDEO, the answer was merging their ideas into a product called Spaces. Read more »
Enabling a mobile rank-and-file team can bring additional productivity, but true collaboration in a distributed enterprise starts at the top and filters through back office services too. Accenture implemented a multi-wave approach that included not simple reductions in cost, but enabling staff to be collaborative. Read more »
There is a new workplace infrastructure, and it has moved out of the office and into the cloud. The human cloud lets SMBs and enterprises hire top talent, reduce overhead costs, and use online technology to assemble and manage teams to work done. Read more »
Technology has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, but human beings and the way they work and manage each other has not evolved and adapted nearly as quickly. That is one of the major challenges for businesses today, according to Allen Delattre of Korn/Ferry International. Read more »
As the world transitions through a “work shift” with remote workers increasingly collaborating online, success will be defined by the companies that can adapt to the new realities, according to Brett Caine, president of Citrix Online at the GigaOM Net:Work conference. Read more »
Organizations tend to believe in collaboration as a means to make employees more productive and improve the way the institutions work, but most businesses and vendors selling collaboration tools go about it the wrong way, according to speakers at the Net:Work conference held in San Francisco. Read more »
Today, at our first-ever Net:Work event, we’re talking to the people developing the technology, addressing new management practices, and making online collaboration work in their own companies. Our livestream begins at 8:15 a.m. PT, and we will be live-blogging the onstage sessions throughout the day. Read more »
You can’t innovate without collaboration, and without innovation, companies fail. There is now a whole new world of collaboration tools available to enable what can best be termed “high-impact collaboration.” These break-through tools — workspaces like Box.net, Huddle and Central Desktop or customer-powered support communities like Get Satisfaction — are made possible through the convergence of cloud computing, social software and the ubiquity of mobile technology. With these new technologies, employees can channel their passions and work together more effectively — regardless of where people are located — to accomplish their mission. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Facebook, Apple, Twitter, LiveOps and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
As a community manager, my role at many events is to make sure that there are plenty of opportunities for community building: getting people talking and spending time together. I wanted to share some suggestions for both attendees and organizers. Read more »
While communication tools like Skype have succeeded in mobilizing an entire generation of workers, collaboration tools are now driving change within businesses. The enterprise is no longer dictated to by legacy technology, but shaped by collaboration tools that let groups form naturally and enable participation. Read more »
One of the benefits of using open source tools is that you can customize them to be used in ways that help your organization. But the what to do after you’ve put the work in and have a customized version of your software available? Read more »
I’ve heard mounting complaints about the Google-centric focus of web workers from those using other scheduling tools, but the fact is that the plethora of tools designed to make scheduling easy can actually make it more difficult. Are you guilty of these scheduling faux pas? Read more »
One of the sessions I’m most looking forward to at Net:Work, Designing the Organization for Real-Time Collaboration, relates to how companies using collaboration tools are adapting to those tools. How are you using collaboration tools, and how have they shaped your work and your organization? Read more »
Some teams are made up of some members who work on-site and some who work remotely. While most research shows that little difference in performance between the two groups, this kind of team poses a challenge, because the on-site workers tend to ignore the remote workers Read more »
As we face up to the holiday season, many of my colleagues are beginning to feel the pressure of deadlines. Time is running short, and suddenly they need my contributions to their projects immediately. These are the tactics I use to manage this need-it-yesterday mentality. Read more »
The work I do is generally solitary, but in the last couple of months, I’ve had to work with teams more than usual, and it’s been Dropbox to the rescue every time. Here are some examples of how Dropbox has come in handy for me lately: Read more »
Metrics can tell us how close we are to our projected timeline, if we’re meeting our quality expectations and measure how well a project is proceeding. In fact, many tools and systems now have built-in analytics to help us more easily track and understand those metrics. Read more »
The biggest change in work, is a move toward what we call “the human cloud.” In the same way that broadband disrupted the IT market, creating a “cloud” of web-enabled infrastructure, the human cloud is shorthand for how the web has disrupted the way we work. Read more »
I sometimes find myself taking over other people’s projects, like rewriting existing website content or finishing website designs. But taking on another person’s project can be challenging, especially if they are no longer around. So how can you make the transition as smooth as possible? Read more »
MindTouch, a provider of intranet tools, has teamed up with Dachis Group to release a new product, the bit-of-a-mouthful MindTouch Social Intranet, with Workforce by Dachis Group. It’s an app that builds on MindTouch’s existing intranet software with a suite of custom-built collaboration applications. Read more »
One way to help to keep everyone up-to-date with the project is to use an internal blog to share information with your team members. It can mean a little extra work, but being being able to keep everyone on the same page can be invaluable. Read more »
n most large organizations, email is the communication tool of choice. It provides a virtual “paper trail,” doesn’t require the recipient to pick up the phone and is accessible in most places. For some organizations, though, that reliance on email can be problematic. Read more »
As virtual teams and remote workers become more common, employers increasingly feeling the need to employ remote monitoring and management tools. The latest of these is Peerdrum, an app that enables managers to track remote workers by taking a snapshot of their screens every few minutes. Read more »
As part of a rapidly growing company with product lines that are continually evolving, I was recently tasked with choosing a platform for the storage of company data, to bring together the information currently housed in Google Docs, emails and elsewhere. I chose editme, here’s why. Read more »
Cloud-based collaboration suite HyperOffice has delivered a slew of improvements to its project management tool. It now features task dependencies and interactive Gantt charts, which should allow for the management of much more complex projects, as well as some other productivity-boosting tweaks to existing functionality. Read more »
The trouble with evaluating small business collaboration is that SMBs differ in their needs. The variation between small businesses and their needs are far more dramatic that those of large companies. A small business could be an individual freelancer, or a business with 50 employees. Read more »
As broadband erases the boundaries between places and time zones, companies can take advantage of remote workers and virtual teams, but two new surveys show that many organizations aren’t, and generally it’s not because they don’t have the tools, but because they don’t have the mindset. Read more »
One of the problems with collaboration is that when it’s done without much planning, it leads to what’s called “social loafing,” where members of a group working together exert less effort than they would if they worked alone. Here are some tips to help prevent it: Read more »
As long as an Internet connection is available, people can work from virtually anywhere: coffee shops, their homes, remote offices. But while having your staff working everywhere is great, how can you make sure that everyone feels like part of one organization and one team? Read more »
Many project management applications have reporting tools built in. The problem is that those reports don’t always match up with the sort of information that you need to be able to provide to the different levels of an organization, which can make your processes inefficient. Read more »
One of the hidden benefits of social networking is the type of collaboration it allows. Where some mediums formalize the collaborative process, social networking allows it to remain organic. Saba Live is a collaboration tool that was designed with that social networking approach in mind; i Read more »
Collaborating isn’t just a matter of sending Word files back and forth: most organizations routinely need to use diagrams and flowcharts to get a good idea of what needs to be done. LucidChart is a graphically-rich web application that makes collaborating on diagrams easy. Read more »
When your organization moves between project management systems, there are a lot of potential hiccups that can occur. Dedicating some thought to the process can make these problems more manageable. Even if you’re moving between two compatible systems, it’s important to keep these questions in mind: Read more »
MangoSpring has been working on the problem of enterprise-level collaboration since 2007 with its flagship tool, MangoTalk. With the 2.0 release of its collaboration suite MangoApps, MangoSpring has stepped up to a new level of integration, which makes the suite a robust choice for an businesses Read more »
There are plenty of chat tools out there, but using one that is purely meant for internal business communication has its benefits — at least, your team won’t be distracted by friends and family. HipChat is a group chat tool built specifically with companies in mind. Read more »
All the streams from the social web have created a flood of information. With this influx of life and data streams comes the desire to stay on top of it all. But this is a bad idea, according to Clifford Nass whom Om interviewed on the topic. Read more »
When choosing the tools your organization relies on, there are many issues to consider. But one is easy to overlook: communication. After all, your team probably has plenty of communication tools already at its disposal. But a variety of communication tools can actually be a problem. Read more »
There are plenty of apps that make collaboration easier — at least once you’ve figured out what your actual project is going to be. But if you’re still in the kicking-around-ideas stage of planning your organization you could probably do with a specialized tool. Read more »
