Why Team Collaboration is On the Rise
WWT Collaboration Practice Director Joe Berger authored an article for No Jitter discussing how collaboration tools are changing the way teams work together in an organization.
Posted by No Jitter on March 14, 2018:
Changing workplace dynamics is leading to more teamwork... and team tools.
I've been in this industry for quite some time, and I've seen how it's evolved.
For the past 15-plus years I've in some way or another been a part of what we refer to as collaboration. I witnessed the rise of "UC," with all its various definitions. I've seen video conferencing get hot, and then cold, and then get hot again. And I've seen conferencing go from 43 cents a minute to nearly free. In general, this industry has aimed to do one main thing (besides make money), and that's to create better experiences that help get our jobs done -- such as reduction in travel, or increased efficiency in business communications.
Over the past couple of years, a shift in the way we work has occurred. We've moved from individual siloed work to agile methodologies and "teams." Now the concept of teams isn't anything new; however, the number of teams we all must now be a part of has risen. A recent Microsoft report found that we're on twice the number of teams today than we were just five years ago. If you take that, plus the fact that there's been a 4x increase in people working remotely over the past decade, according to the same report, then you start seeing challenges for all of these disparate teams and people trying to work together.
Enter team collaboration. Whether you call it business chat, workflow communication, or team collaboration, the concept is the same: a central application, regardless of device, where people chat, post, and edit documents; launch audio and videos calls; and do all of this as part of any number of teams or groups. Products like Slack, Cisco Webex teams, and Microsoft Teams seem to be leading the charge; however, it seems like every week others are entering this space to try to take a bite out of this emerging market.