Why You Can’t Help But Use Online Collaboration

The world is soon going to see a change: Just like the snail mail gave way to email, cubicles will soon be history. Commuting to offices will be thought of as a ridiculous suicidal mission and that’s why collaborating with teams will be something everyone will end up doing – sooner or later. It is important to be able to set-up and form virtual teams, manage them effectively (this is a different animal altogether). You will have to learn to deal with constant attrition in team (again, this happens at the drop of a hat). Management, no matter how much technology improves, will still demand competence and skill. This post however is to talk about the technology bit. Here are the some of the best tools for collaborating with teams online:

• Google Documents: This is my favorite suite of applications that can seriously give Microsoft nightmares forever. Unless you are a power user and depend heavily on Microsoft Office for earning your daily bread, almost everything basic can be done using Google documents. The best part is that it can be used online. It allows for simultaneous editing and discussions about the contents of documents. The reason why I took to it like a fly takes to a sugar cube is because I realized how vulnerable we can get when our laptops crash without notice and your files bite the bullet. Since a Google document is completely web-based, it is highly unlikely that you’d ever lose your files.

• Zoho Suite: I have viewed  Zoho a couple of times and I frankly didn’t need to use more than one “office” like application suite. Zoho shares almost all the features that Google Documents has and as to which web-based collaboration tool you would use, it is only a matter of choice.  One advantage of using Zoho, however, is that there are a lot of other web-based applications like the Zoho CRM and others that can be used together with Zoho’s Office suite.  In this sense, Zoho has the potential to be your one stop complete small business management dashboard. The range of online applications like Zoho Chat, Zoho Meetings, Zoho CRM, Zoho Writer, and so on is really rich and you must use it at least once.

• Thinkfree: I never tried it and I what I am sharing with you is what I  heard about it.The best thing about thinkfree is that it is the closest you can get to have the best of both the Offline and Online working capabilities. With Thinkfree’s Power tool,  you can synchronize with “My office” and anything in My Office can be used both online and off.  It can’t bite you, so you may go ahead give it a try. Just like many other web-based office apps, you can upload, download and collaborate as required.

As you collaborate with various people through-out the world virtually, the ability to have such tools as discussed above would become mandatory. Needless to say, what we discussed is only a tip of the iceberg. In fact, we left out a lot of collaboration and management applications. What online document collaboration tools are you aware of and found great success with?