Business Collaboration Software — A Merging of Minds

The best ideas are sparked through colla­bo­ra­tion. But how can a writer in Chicago brain­storm with another in London? Or how can Mary, a soft­ware engi­neer in Silicon Valley, colla­bo­rate on system design with James, a data­base desi­gner in Manhattan? The answer lies in busi­ness colla­bo­ra­tion software.

Desktop sharing is one such form of soft­ware, and is a fast and effec­tive way to get the job done when colla­bo­ra­ting online. Why wait for several emails to be sent back and forth across the city, country or world, if you have the oppor­tu­nity to share and discuss the work over the Web?

In general, busi­ness colla­bo­ra­tion soft­ware allows people to put their heads toge­ther in a virtual docu­ment workspace. Colla­bo­ra­tion soft­ware, or group­ware, can allow users to work on a docu­ment simul­ta­neously and allows for real-time feed­back and brain­stor­ming. But there are many forms of busi­ness colla­bo­ra­tion programs, ones that allow us to colla­bo­rate in real-time and others that enable us to manage docu­ments and projects via a web-based system.

Don’t Lose That Thought

Take an online docu­ment manage­ment system as an example — One advan­tage to online busi­ness colla­bo­ra­tion soft­ware, over tradi­tional docu­ment sharing methods like e‑mail or print, is that the docu­ment is available anywhere a user has browser-based access to the Internet. Going back to the system design example, suppose Mary realizes there is a missing use-case scenario in the middle of the night. She can make the change imme­dia­tely. When James accesses the docu­ment, Mary’s change will be available for him to see. Better yet, if both Mary and James are online at the same time they can meet each other in a live web confe­rence to discuss the docu­ment and each other’s suggested changes there and then over the Web – a form of real-time busi­ness collaboration.

Don’t Lose Changes

When it comes to online docu­ment manage­ment soft­ware, another important advan­tage is that a single master copy of the docu­ment is stored and versions are tracked by the soft­ware. Have you ever worked on a project where multiple copies of a docu­ment were modi­fied by diffe­rent people? Were changes lost because of version skew? Such busi­ness colla­bo­ra­tion soft­ware packages support the ability to check out docu­ments before making a change. When this feature is enabled, only one user will be able to check out a docu­ment for modi­fi­ca­tion. Other users will be able to read the docu­ment, but not modify it, until the docu­ment is checked back in. The result –changes are never lost.

Busi­ness colla­bo­ra­tion soft­ware helps minds merge anywhere, anytime, ideas occur. Let us know via the comm­ents if you have been supporting your Mikogo commu­ni­ca­tions with other forms of colla­bo­ra­tive software.

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