Tags: collaboration, Management, software
So, we’ve all heard about this collaboration thing and how much it is essential to modern business, and that includes how essential it is to modern marketing. What’s the truth behind collaboration and do you really need to spend time thinking aobut it, let alone doing it?
There’s no doubt about two things: a) humans come up with better outputs when they work with other humans; and b) marketing is not possible on your own. For both of these reasons, collaboration seems to be a sensible thing to spend some time thinking about.
Lots of articles and discussion about collaboration is driven by companies that have collaboration software to sell. That’s not necessarily suspicious, as no one really makes software that is useless and tries to sell it to you, as that’s just a waste of their time and money. Software companies really are trying to meet your needs when they come up with new software in my view.
There’s a lot of it about. Blimey look at this site called ‘central desktop‘ which some marketers have used. Then there’s this award-winning site called box.net which allows you to do quite a lot for no money, then more things if you pay a bit. And the lovely huddle.net, used by some big brands.
So, is it worth investing in collaboration software? You need to ask yourself these questions:
1. Do I need two or more people to give their views about the marketing activity in my organisation?
2. Do we waste quite a lot of time faffing about waiting to get approvals or comments back on any part of the marketing process we use today?
3. Would it be easier if I could go online, add a few comments to a proposal, then stick it up somewhere so others in the company or agency could see it too and give their views?
If any or all of your answers are yes (and particularly if any of your answers are YESSSS!!). then it’s probably worth finding out a bit about collaboration software.
And another thing, the Google boys have sent me an invitation to try out their collaboration software called ‘Googlewave’. If you and some of your colleagues/agency types want to give it a go and test it out on a campaign or other marketing stuff, then e-mail editorial@themarketer.co.uk and volunteer to be a test group. I’ll send you the information, as long as you promise to come back and tell us how it went – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Paul Sloane
Mark Kelleher
All information workers do have some level of collaboration needs. We are always working together within a network of team members, members of other teams, vendors outside the company, partners or clients. And increasingly, we are working with people across geographies. It is not uncommon for a worker to interact on a daily basis with someone in Banglore or Beijing. You have to work together on documents, schedule meetings, coordinate projects etc etc (we had once done an article on this – http://www.hyperoffice.com/business-email-overload/). One could always use email for the above, but using collaboration tools is vastly more effective. In short, one could say that the need for collaboration is universal
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Pankaj
Interesting, I`ll quote it on my site later.
Googlewave is looking really promising. But like all online collaboration software, I am still concerned about security, like with any other online management software.
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