8 good reasons to use collaborative working tools

Tired of repeated meetings? Too many emails to deal with? Where's that priority file? Collaborative working tools can solve all your problems, especially when it comes to project management. If you have any of the following 8 symptoms, you need to use a collaborative working platform as a matter of urgency, morning, noon and night. If you don't yet have an opinion on task management software, it's because you don't know what it is. Relax, we'll explain it all to you.

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1. Your mailbox is overflowing

Email is great for sending a quick message or sending a small file as an attachment. Where it gets tricky is when you want to share a much larger file, or when you end up with 12 versions of a document and can't remember which one you're looking for. If your email inbox also resembles a meeting room, sometimes with a meeting within the meeting, it's time to adopt a platform designed for that.

2. You spend too much time in meetings

Are you fed up with acute meeting fatigue? Meeting after meeting, agenda often forgotten? The subject of the meeting has been changed at the last minute and you haven't brought the right file? Should we postpone? Are we getting tangled up internally? If you think your time is precious and you don't want to waste it on endless or unproductive meetings, then you need a collaborative working tool.

3. You never know where your team stands

Who's done what? Who's ahead? Who's behind schedule? Who's having problems? Are the stages following each other correctly? Can we move on to the next phase of the project? Will we be able to meet the deadlines? Don't panic, you can improve the monitoring of your team's collaborative work: we'll look at this together below.

4. You don't know how to prioritise your tasks

Everything is always urgent and always for yesterday. The acronym ASAP (as soon as possible) has almost become a customary courtesy in your company, like a "good morning"? What really needed to be dealt with urgently is still not finished, and what could wait is already finished? Today's technology helps you to sort things out and allocate your priorities. Incidentally, it also makes you more zen.

5. Sharing documents is a constraint

Sharing documents between colleagues is no picnic? Has it even become a gas factory within your department? Who has the right version? What do you mean the document has been thrown in the bin? If you're seeing red and the lights are flashing, it's because you don't yet have an online workspace that simplifies this simple task.

6. Work organisation needs to be reviewed

If, at your last meeting, your final outburst was something along the lines of "What do you mean you've all been doing the same tasks separately?", then there's a major work organisation problem in your team. Perhaps the notion of collaborative working escapes you? We'll sort it out, just be patient...

7. Project management is not your forte

Yes, we know: you shouldn't say so. Especially not to your boss. As for the team, let's not even talk about it: they think that everything rests on your shoulders. If that's the case, it's best to get a project management tool to help you manage each project more effectively! We've got a tip for you a few lines down.

8. Productivity isn't up to scratch

You've reached the end of the list, and let's face it: you and your team can do better. There are a few areas for improvement. But what can you do? How can we work better together as a team?

Let's open the doors to the wonderful world of collaborative working tools. The answers you're looking for are inside.

How collaborative working improves productivity

As we have seen from the 8 points we have just listed, the main challenges of teamwork can be summed up as follows:

• work management
• team communication
• work organisation
• exchanging information and sharing documents,
• project management.

What is collaborative working? Quite simply, it's a way of working as a team, collectively, more efficiently, with much less hierarchy. The use of information and communication technologies is necessary to achieve this: these are web-based tools that provide concrete answers in terms of uses. These include a range of collaborative working tools that encourage interaction, cooperation and coordination with the aim of improving productivity. More often than not, only a complete collaborative platform is capable of meeting all the challenges of collaborative working.

We also use the term task management software, or sometimes online project management software: the platform offers a virtual workspace (online) and various tools, which we call functionalities. The latter enable collaborative work to be better organised and monitored, communication to be improved and, ultimately, project management as a whole to be optimised. Groupware is also the name given to this type of software, which brings together collaborative working tools that promote teamwork. Your team can also use certain collaborative platforms such as a corporate social network.

Which collaborative working tools should I use?

There are so many different tools on offer, and so many different answers! It all depends on your uses and expectations. We invite you to define your needs carefully and use our search engine to discover all the solutions that can help you improve collaborative working and teamwork. Common sense dictates that there should be a messaging function for private messages. The shared diary should also be able to offer a view of the situation, so that tasks can be better coordinated. To give you some food for thought, we're going to talk about the 4 strong points of an intuitive solution that is resolutely geared towards collaborative working : Azendoo.

Each solution has its own qualities and faults, depending on a team's apprehension (in relation to the tool) and its needs, so we prefer to focus on the major qualities of the collaborative platform, its differentiating assets:

• this project management software is easy to use and intuitive,
• You can view the progress of your own tasks, or those of your team, at any time, so you can organise your work efficiently,
• the time management function helps you to increase everyone's productivity,
• the unrivalled quality of the platform 's French support even offers made-to-measure assistance.

Project management software promotes communication

Better work organisation through visualisation

Part of project management involves planning tasks over time, for yourself or your colleagues. Visualising the tasks in progress entrusted to your team, or your own tasks, is essential for better organisation. Azendoo offers you both possibilities: a personal view, as well as a team view.

Team view :

This is the collective view, shared by every member of your collaborative project. To stay on top of a project's progress, the team view gives you an analytical view. You can instantly see which tasks have been completed and which are in progress. It's easy for the project manager to keep track of the team's work. They can organise work management much more efficiently, and monitor the project with complete peace of mind.

Your personal view :

With this view, you can see only the tasks that are personally assigned to you. You concentrate on your own work and organise yourself each day according to your personal workload.

Time management at the heart of the organisation

The quality of the platform's French support

French speakers will appreciate this: the application, which in our opinion competes with corporate social networks, is available in French. That's great!
Because the Azendoo team provides in-depth support:

• the presence of a French support team is so rare that we'd like to highlight it,
• various educational tools to help you discover the tool (demonstration videos, videoconferencing, tutorials on the website, etc.),
• the availability of the whole package means you can get answers 7 days a week,
• the possibility of visiting your site for a hands-on session demonstrates the quality of the service.

To illustrate the attentiveness and quality of the team's support, there's nothing like a testimonial from a satisfied customer. AG2R expressed the need for support with its digital transformation and selected Azendoo for the quality of its collaborative working tools. The platform sent a consultant to help its customer's staff get to grips with and use the tool: learning by doing reassures and motivates teams! Watch AG2R's short testimonial (4 min) on Azendoo's support in the video below:

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Where are you with your project management?

Are your current management tools no longer working for you? Do you want to instil a team dynamic within your department and simplify sharing? Do you want to co-ordinate work and work together seamlessly? Are you looking for productivity? What are your own good reasons for adopting a platform like Azendoo?