Collaboration Portal: For Productivity and Customer Satisfaction in the Digital Era

1
Collaboration Portal For Productivity and
Customer Satisfaction in the Digital Era
Remote work has become the new normal in the
pandemic. Businesses that lagged in digital
connectivity had to come up with remote
solutions. They learned how to manage their
teams remotely, encourage digital collaboration,
and provide customers with their needed tools.
The outcome is that virtual format has now become
a norm. 54 percent of Americans say that they
want to continue working from home. 66 percent
expect to go for a hybrid
sales_at_crmjetty.com
2

• model. As a result, communication and
  collaboration have undergone a drastic shift.
  Digital collaboration has become the norm, and
  post-pandemic, its likely to continue.
• Businesses must adopt new digital methods like
  video chat, ?le sharing, and chat options to
  connect with employees and customers. And thats
  what we are going to cover in this article.
• Collaboration portal features
• Collaboration portal best practices
• Before we get into the features, lets try to
  understand the role of the collaboration portal
  in your organization. Whether its a small team
  with a few customers or a big organization,
  collaboration software bridges the communication
  gap between employees and customers. As a
  business, you can increase task completion,
  knowledge gathering, team-building exercises,
  and more. A collaboration tool connects
  customers/employees with the right people and
  channelizes information sharing to drive the
  right decisions.
• Apart from that, there are various ways portals
  bene?t your organization

sales_at_crmjetty.com
3

• Streamlines communication by providing customers
  and employees with a uni?ed interface no more
  redundant emails and calls.
• Facilitates information storing and data sharing
  with communities, small groups, and individuals
  with a few clicks.
• Enables teammates to work together even remotely.
  They can share documents, participate in
  discussions and do a lot more within a single
  workspace.
• Increases accountability and allows team members
  to go back and check the mistakes and prevent
  them from recurring.
• Improves relationships with external stakeholders
  by allowing them to browse the knowledge base,
  submit questions, and manage everything related
  to tickets.
• Eliminates trivial activities such as status
  updates, to-do lists, meetings requests. You can
  manage it all from one place.
• Promotes business expansion and growth.
  Collaboration inspires teams to participate,
  share ideas, raise bars, and foster
  communication for business enhancement.
• Builds your brand and shows you in a positive
  light in front of your customers.

sales_at_crmjetty.com
4
To garner these bene?ts, having the right set of
features in your collaboration software is
essential. And what are those features? Lets
see it. Must-Have Collaboration Portal
Features Uni?ed Communication A centralized
network with internal communication
capabilities eliminates the bottlenecks in human
interaction. With a centralized platform, you
and your stakeholders can communicate related to
a project within one place. Without searching
through email threads, you can ?nd relevant
information in the chat group. The conversation
threads help team members to provide feedback,
request approvals, and send documents to each
other. Apart from this, you can take advantage
of video calls, virtual meetings, streaming
everything from a single platform.
sales_at_crmjetty.com
5

• Slack, a communication tool, is a good
  inspiration for internal collaboration. It
  includes features like search, noti?cations,
  screen sharing, customizable chatbots, and
  third-party integrations. Some solutions also
  allow attaching ?les with comments in internal
  messaging features to improve virtual
  connectivity.
• Heres what you should include to enhance
  communication
• Real-time chat and messaging
• Audio and video conferencing
• Discussion threads
• File sharing
• Noti?cations and Alerts
• Tip Include stickers, GIFs, emojis in the chat
  platform. Offer all the possible communication
  channels in a single group.

sales_at_crmjetty.com
6
Let your team members choose how they would like
to communicate. Task Management If the purpose
of the collaboration is to expedite projects,
then managing tasks would simplify the processes.
Your remote team can manage their tasks and work
as per their routine. You, on the contrary, can
set up a task list for teams, send reminders to
you and your team members, and attach ?les to
the list for quick access.
With task management, you can track your
employees accomplishments, including project
progress. It helps you meet goals and keep
everyone on the same page. Trello, for example,
allows users to collaborate within a board and
create a card for every task that moves across
the board with easy drag-and-drop functionality.
Users can add others
sales_at_crmjetty.com
7

• to the task and even attach ?les to it. Other
  examples include Asana and Wrike.
• Key features to include
• Boards to create and manage tasks
• Task assignment to add people to tasks
• Task prioritization to set schedule
• Planning and scheduling to meet deadlines
• File management to store and attach ?les
• Comments and real-time sharing
• Tip Offer easy-to-read calendar views of tasks
  and deadlines. It will help you and your team
  members to plan, schedule, and adjust tasks
  based on their objectives and goals.
• Document Management
• While working remotely, it can take a lot of time
  to access information that only one employee has
  access to. You/other team members might have to
  wait till the person logs in, reads the message,
  and shares the ?le. Cloud-based document
  management, however, can make it easy for
  everyone in the organization to access documents,
  update, and forward along to other teams.

sales_at_crmjetty.com
8

• G-suite products such as Google Drive helps users
  access and share Docs within the company. Based
  on their permissions, users can view, comment,
  or edit the docs in real-time, with changes
  automatically saved in the cloud. Similar to
  Google Docs, Quip provides a cloud-based
  workspace to collaborate on documents in
  real-time.
• Also Read A Complete Guide to Document
  Management.
• These types of cloud-based collaboration spaces
  can improve productivity by giving users access
  to all the ?les from one place.
• Key highlights of this feature are
• Document and content management
• Real-time collaboration
• Synchronous editing
• Ready-made templates
• Shortcuts for text formatting
• Version control

sales_at_crmjetty.com
9

• Revision history
• Con?uence and Samepage are other examples of
  document management software.
• Tip Name the documents accurately so that its
  easy to see the latest version.
• Security Features
• While focusing on collaboration and engagement,
  you should not forget the importance of data
  protection and security. The collaboration
  portal should offer various

layers and ?exible permissions such as
authentication, login, password, role-based
protection two-factor access, etc.
The role-based access will restrict the users
from accessing unauthorized information, while
two-factor authentication ensures that a
malicious person cannot access the portal. Dont
forget to add additional security protocols.
sales_at_crmjetty.com
10

• Tip For two-factor authentication, ask users to
  provide a pin/password along with some form of
  identi?cation such as question prompts.
• The collaboration portal features mentioned above
  are advanced features based on the type of
  collaboration software youre looking for
  project collaboration, knowledge collaboration,
  document and content collaboration, and social
  collaboration.
• Heres a list of features you can add if youre
  just starting
• Secure login
• Knowledge base
• Self-service
• Document sharing
• In-app messaging
• Real-time noti?cation
• Smart dashboard
• Integrated calendar
• Develop your collaboration portal
• To manage projects, documents, team
  collaboration, and more.
• Collaboration Portal Development Best Practices

sales_at_crmjetty.com
11
Get the most out of your collaboration software
by implementing the following practices Better
UI UI is important as your employees and
customers wont use a clumsy solution. Hence, it
should be clutter-free, intuitive, and easy to
search and navigate. While designing UI, ask
questions like how can I make it better for
employees? Mobility Even if your team is
working from a workstation throughout the day,
your solution should give them the ?exibility to
work from mobile phones. Hence, offer mobility
and responsiveness. Allow your employees to work
from any device of their choice. Integration
Opportunities Collaboration software should be
?exible enough to integrate different tools for
better results. It should allow sync with
various marketing tools, whether its via API
connection or backend development, for example,
Zoom and Google Meet integration for video
conferencing. Automation Automation is the key
to business productivity. The best thing you can
do is automate manual tasks like organizing
sales_at_crmjetty.com
12
documents, sending real-time noti?cations and
reminders of all the activities, etc. Hybrid
Approach If your goal is to manage an entire
business, bringing in one collaboration software
wont be enough. So, implement a hybrid
approach, i.e., go for a custom collaboration
portal development that manages documents,
tasks, projects, communication, and overall
business. CRMJetty has been in the portal
industry for more than a decade. We have served
various clients from different industries with
unique requirements. We combine all that
experience with our industry knowledge and build
custom solutions for our clients. If you need to
develop a collaboration portal, we will develop a
custom one per your requirements and market
trends. Contact us
Source https/ www.crmjetty.com/blog/collaboratio
n-portal-in- digital-era/
sales_at_crmjetty.com