Collaboration is a great way for people to get things done, gain knowledge and have fun together. When employees work with others in a group, they can easily solve difficult problems, share valuable learning and coordinate their work. Face to face meetings are also great for group collaboration but they also have problems.
Online Collaboration can get around some of those problems, and also provide some benefits that face to face meetings can not provide.
Following are four main problems with face to face group collaboration:
1. Same place: All team members must meet in the same place which can involve time consuming, expensive and environmentally unsustainable travel.
2. Same time: All team members must meet at the same time. And to scheduling a meeting to suit everyone is difficult in small groups and impossible in a large one.
3. No record: Each person or a minute-taker must take notes about what was said.
4. Now or never: In a group meeting, you have one chance to have your say and sometimes that great idea is a little time coming.
How Online Collaboration overcome these problems
1. Participate from any place: This may seem obvious but it reflects the greatest effect that the Internet has had on the World: reduced the cost of communication. Digital communications technology has made the World smaller. You can participate in meetings from any other location.
2. Participate Anytime: Sometimes people do read or post content at different times, which is possible through various tools of online collaboration such as email, Yahoo Groups, etc. No scheduling is required.
3. Create an Archive: With online collaboration, every meeting held is automatically recorded so that there is usually a lasting archived that can be searched and browsed. It is useful for preserving organizational knowledge.
4. Participate at your own Pace:You do not have respond straight away with online collaboration. You can read the conversations at your own pace and can respond when you are ready.
Online Collaboration saves your lot of time
The benefits of online collaboration stem from the fact that an archive is created as the collaboration occurs. This allows people to participate, not at the exact moment, when they feel right. It means they can listen closely and think before they reply. Also, it gives them time to browse various discussions and choose the ones that are of most interest.
Online collaboration provides these opportunities stretching into the future. People can find the information that you post at any time in the future in online groups, saving them time with no extra effort from you.
Altura Communication Solutions is a leading provider of communication-enabled solutions and managed Business Collaboration Network services to the enterprises. It is one of the best organizations in North America provides Video Collaboration and communications solution services to customers through higher efficiency, lower cost and greater revenue.
