The continuing productivity benefits of cloud collaboration

THE digital workplace has gone from being a mere option to becoming essential for most businesses of this generation. The need to engage and align with the rest of the organization — even during minor interruptions like work trips, days off, medical leave or major disruptions like personal crises, resignations or natural disasters — means we could not avoid the use of technology in daily business operations.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has only underscored that many organizations have had to readjust the way they operate. Remote working is now a reality for large sections of the workforce, and remote collaboration through cloud-based platforms is their way of contributing to the overall productivity of the organization.

What moves businesses to the cloud

As more companies in Southeast Asia offer flexible working arrangements to their employees, there is an obvious increase in focus to apply innovative solutions to support the changing nature of work.

Gibu Mathew, Zoho Corp. vice president and general manager for Asia-Pacific, said: “The proliferation of cloud computing today has helped smaller businesses combat scattered collaboration. Besides obvious benefits such as quick access and sharing of files, constructing workflow rules for automating tasks is especially useful in making sure document owners and members avoid missing out on important project phases.”

Cloud computing or collaboration may not be as new as it seems, but it has become popular among businesses of all types and sizes.

In today’s climate of Covid19-related restrictions and prohibitions, the cloud comes as a boon to relatively smaller organizations whose employees work from home and collaborate online.

Accessing work remotely does not mean employees would no longer be able to connect with their colleagues’ expertise. On the contrary, inputs are better registered in real time, allowing collaborative work to be picked up instantaneously. And in situations where a less technically savvy individual encounters hiccups, concerned co- workers could take advantage of remote troubleshooting assistance, making the cloud a versatile platform for just about any kind of work.

Mathew said: “There are really no pointless copies of the same data. All the data resides in one central location and every user is served from there, wherever they have access. There are of course precautionary backups, but the host handles it all.”

He further explained that the mobility of data in an organization could be managed in a highly controlled and safe mode in which collaborative technologies help to reduce and avoid costs, accelerate time to market, and transform entire industries.

As more people interact, the organization enjoys more benefits of collaboration. For instance, in a more traditional business set up, working on projects across departments tend to anticipate more delays, most of which comes from the most recent inputs going unnoticed. As the volume of tasks grows online, collaborators lose sight of priority levels, eventually also losing out on the critical moments to create the best intended outcome.

In contrast, in modern collaboration format, what used to be a sequential and slow approach has now allowed for professionals of diverse backgrounds to contribute at any given stages, saving time on exhausting meeting hours.

More than the savings

The new age of collaboration has proven to deliver tremendous gains to businesses. One way to measure its results is by cost savings, but many companies also realize significant productivity gains through business collaboration. Effective collaboration could improve the product development process, take time out of the sales cycle, or reduce the time required in creating marketing content.

In an era of dispersed teams, stay-at-home work and reduced travel budgets, it is increasingly difficult to build trusted relationships with customers, partners and even colleagues. Private social networks, audio and web conferences, team spaces, on-demand videos, chat and HR apps that track timesheet help us overcome the limitations of distance and time zones.

Indeed, even in these Covid19-threatened times, effective use of collaboration tools has become an essential ingredient of business continuity, if not commercial success.