5 Best Collaboration Tools for Business
Fortunately, email and phone calls are no longer the only tools at your disposal when you’re looking to create collaboration in the workplace. Here are five of the best collaboration tools for businesses in 2021.
1. Asana
Staying on top of multiple projects can be a challenge. Doing so in a collaborative environment where the workflow involves multiple people contributing can make things even tougher. What stage is a particular project at? Who has responsibility for it right now? Is there a central repository with all the relevant links? Where are the current bottlenecks?
Asana can help you answer these questions. It’s a task management tool created by two former Facebook executives that seeks to clear your virtual table of emails, spreadsheets and whatever other ways people previously tried to keep on top of multiple projects. Its core features allow you to create a list of projects as individual cards, share details concerning required actions, tag collaborators, and lay out deadlines. You can then move these cards around to show the progression of a project through to its completion.
The most popular layout for Asana is a kanban-style board, but there are plenty of other ways you can visualize the workflow of projects. As far as best collaboration tools go, it’s a “must have.”
- Visualizes project workflow in a way that makes it clear how far a project has progressed and who is currently responsible for it.
- Progress reports and status updates let you check whether projects are on schedule to be completed on time.
- Can be customized to fit the requirements of a team and their workflow.
- Boards can get cluttered when there are large numbers of cards and complex workflows.
Platforms supported: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
Cost: Free tier available. Paid options start at $10.99 per month when paid annually.
2. Zoom
Zoom has enjoyed a meteoric rise as a leading videotelephony and online chat service, particularly during the pandemic with people stuck working from home. The big hook with Zoom is that it offers free video calls that can be either one-on-one or as giant conference calls with a maximum of 300 attendees (100 attendees for the free tier). It is easy to use and offers an impressive set of features that continue to make it stand out from the pack.
- User experience is straightforward with an intuitive interface.
- Breakout room feature allows you to split up meetings into up to 50 separate sessions.
- While progress has been made, there have been privacy concerns in the past. The practice of Zoombombing is also problematic.
- The free, basic plan only allows group calls to last 40 minutes. (Of course, not everyone will view that as a negative!)
Platforms supported: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
Cost: Free tier available. Paid options start at $10.99 per month when paid annually.
3. Google Docs
Google Docs was a game-changer for workplace collaboration when it launched, and it remains an essential tool well over a decade on. Google Docs’ core product is a stripped down, but still highly functional, cloud-based word processor that can be shared with multiple users (up to 100) who may then comment and edit.
If you lived and worked through the bad old days, in which work-in-progress files had to be saved locally and then emailed around so that you were never quite sure what the latest version was, Google Docs is a lifesaver. Meanwhile, the Google Docs office suite expands things further by allowing collaborative editing of not just documents, but also spreadsheets, presentations, forms, and far more.
- Document creation and file sharing is easy.
- Effective team collaboration, chat and commenting features are simple and useful.
- A variety of file types are supported for importing and exporting.
- It doesn’t have some of the more advanced features found on premium rivals like MS Word.
- Needs an always-on internet connection to use.
Platforms supported: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS
Price: Free to use
4. Slack
Slack wasn’t the first text-based workplace chat app, but it’s one of the best. It builds on the chat room paradigm that’s been around since the early days of the internet with an interface that’s not too different to instant messaging. However, Slack’s focus on being great business collaboration software is apparent from the way it’s been built.
Slack allows you to create different channels, whether it’s a free-for-all with everyone or rooms divided by team, project or however else you choose to arrange it. You can direct message colleagues individually or quickly message a group. It also lets you drop in files as an easy mechanism for sharing.
- Slack will streamline your workplace communication, reducing the number of emails you’ll have to send and receive on a daily basis.
- Good search functions that let you quickly find files, conversations or people. The full paid version features archives that go back all the way to when you signed up.
- Lets you share files and offers integrations with everything from Dropbox to Google Drive.
- The free version only lets you see the last 10,000 messages sent.
- While it saves on emails, it won’t stop you from doing a whole lot of typing for communication purposes.
Platforms supported: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS
Cost: Free tier available. Paid options vary depending on business size and requirements.
5. Echo
Echo is our messaging app built on the simplest communication method of all for most people: your voice. Because speaking is normally faster and more nuanced than typing, Echo is a workplace chat app that lets you send voice messages to colleagues. These are also transcribed using built-in speech recognition tools for scenarios where that’s required. For anyone who finds text-based communication can be too limited (and who hasn’t had the experience of reading a message on a platform like Slack and wondering how it was intended?), this is one of the great online collaboration tools for business.
- Saves you from having to type endless messages throughout the day.
- Could help you ditch the unceasing Zoom calls and other video chat requests, while giving users more time to research and properly consider their answers rather than feeling put on the spot.
- Offers the benefits of live interaction with colleagues, even when you’re working remotely across different time zones.
- Currently available on Mac only. (This may change in the future.)
Platforms supported: Mac
Price: Free tier available. Version for teams of all sizes with added functionality is $5 per month per user, paid annually.
Wrapping it up
If you’re not careful, team communication and collaboration can be one of the first things to suffer if you’re working remotely. By using these tools — in conjunction with instilling collaborative values in your employees — that doesn’t have to be the case.
Collaboration Tools For Business - FAQs
What is a business collaboration?
Collaboration in the workplace means colleagues working together to achieve goals. The right real-time tools can help with this.
What are collaboration tools for business?
Anything that can make the experience of working with colleagues to achieve goals easier. We’ve included a list of the best ones here.
How can online collaboration help businesses?
Collaboration means harnessing everyone’s talents to achieve certain business goals. The right online tools can help make this happen.
What is the best free business collaboration software?
All of the tools we’ve included here have a free tier to make them valuable collaboration software.
