How integrated technology supports collaboration between teams

To succeed in the ever-changing business landscape, organizations require talent and the right tools to help team members collaborate. Alone, an employee may be able to do good work, but in collaboration with his or her team members, anything is possible.

Emerging trends in collaboration technology indicate that organizations require unique tools to leverage their data across teams. Integrating that technology throughout an organization can enhance workflows and generate additional value for the business.

The importance of collaboration

According to Queens University of Charlotte, 73 percent of employers say soft skills like collaboration are more important than job-specific skills, and three out of four respondents named collaboration as very important to strategic communication within their organization.

A lack of collaboration between team members slows down processes. When team members aren't in the same room, the challenge becomes even greater. As reported by CNBC, 70 percent of employees telecommute at least one day a week, and 53 percent work remotely at least half the week. Though likely a good thing for employee satisfaction, remote work frequency could lead to collaboration challenges - unless the organization has the right technology.

What's driving collaboration trends?

In addition to the prevalence of remote work, advancements in other areas of technology have spurred the move toward greater focus on collaboration in the workplace. Research analyst and Forbes contributor Daniel Newman noted that the rise of artificial technology and machine learning tools have also influenced collaboration trends.

For instance, chatbots and digital personal assistants make it more efficient for employees to book meetings, schedule task reminders and take notes. Integrating these new technologies into a collaborative workflow could yield valuable results. For example, a team member could use a digital assistant to take notes at a conference, upload the data to a cloud service and share it with relevant stakeholders throughout the organization in a matter of moments.

Why integration is essential

Having tools to visualize your organization's data and share assets between team members is important, but it's not the endgame. To fully optimize your organization's ability to harness the power of its data, these tools need to be able to talk to one another. If data is siloed off, it costs additional resources to transmit to another environment, risking contamination and human error along the way.

The health care industry has dealt with this pain point for many years. According to EHR Intelligence, lack of interoperability between electronic health records has made it difficult for physicians' offices to share patient data securely. Furthermore, the industry has been slow to standardize data types, leading to further integration issues.

"As a company who provides technology consultants to a wide array of health care entities, we are consistently tasked with finding individuals with skill sets to meet the collaboration demand," says Travis Reding, Vice President of Operations for Beacon Hill's Technologies Division. "Keeping up with the latest trends and platforms, while challenging, has provided us an opportunity to create collaboration-specific technology delivery programs to meet the evolving needs of our customers."

Other industries may not have quite the life-or-death risk associated with integration errors in the world of health care, but lack of standardization hurts other types of businesses, too. Veteran technology consultant and CMSWire contributor David Coleman noted that the transition from stand-alone applications toward client server apps is starting to solve this problem. Software-as-a-service solutions can update periodically, giving users new functionalities and features over time. In many cases, new business apps will add integrations periodically, allowing users to leverage data in new and valuable ways.

Determining the best collaboration solutions for your organization

Auditing your organization's collaboration needs is no easy task. Companies with heavily siloed departments aren't structured for intense collaboration. However, the right technology can make the transition to transparency much more smoothly.

Beacon Hill Technologies offers world-class consulting services that can identify opportunities for process optimization, including the adoption of collaboration solutions. To learn more, explore our case studies.

This content is brought to you by the Marketing Team at Beacon Hill Staffing Group.