The Apps You Need For Effective Collaboration In Startups
It is one thing for established corporations and organizations to foster a collaborative culture. But in small startups, often working with remote team members and contract workers, it magnifies the challenge. Keeping all members focused on the goals and working simultaneously on projects is of paramount importance in those early days of the new company. But nobody wants to open huge file attachments on their smart phones or sit in on endless conference calls. So how do you foster collaboration in startups? You find apps for that.
1. BoostHQ
One of the best is BoostHQ. BoostHQ becomes your team's virtual workspace. It's a workspace for your team's documents, spreadsheets, videos, links, checklists, polls and discussions.
BoostHQ makes knowledge sharing in teams easy and powerful. Curate any type of content, share it, and ignite real-time discussion on content. Employees no longer need to be in the same room in order to spark knowledge and innovation.
BoostHQ also integrates with all the tools you already use to make collaboration just that much easier. Share or create a google doc, spreadsheet or PowerPoint straight in the platform. Pull your content from your Dropbox or email.
Best part is that BoostHQ has a Chrome Browser Extension that allows you to integrate BoostHQ seamlessly into your workflow. It's also available on web.
BoostHQ allows your team collaboration to be done effectively and efficiently. It's your team sharing that doesn't waste time. Your employees will no longer need to waste 1/3 of their time looking for information or trying to find the right people to talk to. Everyone in your team will be able to easily share their expertise and knowledge.
2. Slack
Another useful app is Slack. It's slogan "where work happens" pretty much says it all. It is an app that helps you bring together all the pieces and people who neeed to get the job done and your startup company off in the right direction.
Slack offers your team everything from a string of chatrooms to a searchable archive. You can make a channel for a specific project or team, including freelancers. Everyone can see everything, or you can create a private channel for invited team members only if you wish. You can message both individuals and teams, conduct face-to-face calls and share files, images, PDFs, documents and spreadsheets.
Slack is very good at communicating via chat-threads with your employees, it's not the best at content sharing. BoostHQ is a stronger app in regards to this since no content gets lost in these endless Slack chat-threads.
3. Dropbox
When it comes to moving big files around, you still can't breat Dropbox. You can secure 1TB of storage for an investment of $10 a month and the files are synched. Since we are especially looking at apps that foster collaboration, it is worth noting that the Dropbox Paper is a great collaboration tool that can fit well with many startups.
4. OneNote
Another more traditional favorite for startups is Office 365 because Microsoft's collaboration programs work well on most devices. OneNote is still a great tool to share team member's thoughts, observations and ideas, and the range of other programs from Outlook to Excel, Word and Powerpoint are programs most people are familiar with and they work well.
5. G Suite
The same can be said for Google Apps. G Suite, for example, gives you such favorites as Google Docs, Calendar, Gmail, and Drive. They excel at search and Cloud Search can help you determine the files you need to see first as you begin your workday.
6. Evernote
Evernote is hot again as well after the company improved its speed and reliability and gave its interface with mobile platforms an overhaul. Evernote Business remains a useful and dependable way to help team members collaborate by managing projects and doing assignments in a central location. They also offer a great menu of options to fit almost any unique situation.
7. Box's Notes
On the other hand, one of the most useful features for startups has to be Box's Notes app which helps team members consolidate their notes and thoughts and ideas into actionable lists. It really boosts the ability of team members to work together.
A bonus is that Box's services can be integrated with Salesforce, Google and Microsoft. it's no longer just a tool to sync your files. It's now an active helper in the collaboration process.
