Collaboration is central to most business’ production strategies nowadays. It’s no secret that businesses are doing more with less and in order to coordinate resources that are stretched thin, companies are looking to collaborative software titles. Today, we will briefly go through three of the most popular collaboration apps to give you an idea of what they can bring to your business.
Microsoft Teams
The first collaboration software we want to look at is Microsoft Teams. Teams’ biggest benefit is a direct integration with Office 365. Using one window you can view Outlook-based calendars and meetings; create, share, edit and find content in shared workspaces (OneDrive, OneNote, SharePoint); and communicate with other members of the team (Skype). Best yet, it is free to use for companies that already rely on the Microsoft Office 365 platform. The ability to share content and resources in one central location over several projects is a massive benefit for companies who are looking to get the most out of their available talent.
Microsoft Teams is benefiting from additional integrations and continuous development from one of the largest and most respected software companies in the world. Teams’ biggest advantage is that with it’s integration with other Office 365 apps, businesses can streamline their productivity and collaboration strategies without relying too heavily on third-party offerings.
Slack
Slack, much like Microsoft Teams, is a collaboration software designed to make project-based management easier. The difference between the two, of course, is that Slack has formed partnerships with hundreds of outside applications so that users can customize their Slack experience to meet their needs. Companies are continuously adding to their feature-set, giving Slack an advantage in what it’s capable of doing.
Like Microsoft Teams, it is a forum-based chat program that integrates with other tools to make it as dynamic as users (or companies) want it to be. Slack’s online community features thousands of groups that can help businesses and professionals, alike. In fact, while established large companies do favor Microsoft Teams, smaller organizations and start-ups that need more flexibility roundly prefer Slack. Essentially, Slack can replace a lot of the other traditional business communications such as email and text messaging as it can be used on mobile and desktop computers from anywhere.
Discord
Shifting gears a little bit, one platform that was started for gamers has made its way into the corporate collaboration space. The platform is called Discord, and it’s collaborative benefits are tied to communication, especially voice communication. Everyone knows that most collaboration requires close communication and that is exactly what Discord offers. In fact, some businesses that were using Slack and Microsoft Teams have moved to Discord as it presents them with the communicative options that they’ve been looking for the entire time.
Discord is mostly a conferencing application that is free to use. You can create your own server for free and video chat, audio chat, text message and share screens. The real-time aspect of using a Discord server provides continuous communication, which is a big aspect of modern collaboration. Discord offers bots that help keep users focused on the task at hand and can also be great for whole-team building activities.
Without the native integrations found with titles like Microsoft Teams and Slack, Discord doesn’t provide the feature-rich options some businesses may need, but there is no denying that Discord is one of the best tools we’ve found for collaboration.
What do you think? Are you in the market to add a collaboration app? Do you already use one of these titles? Share your collaboration story in the comments below and stop back to our blog for more great IT information designed to help you get the most out of your business.
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