Online Collaboration Platforms:

Transcription

1 Online Collaboration Platforms: How Do They Stack Up? Samepage July, Kerio Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be trademarked by their respective owners.

2 Everyone is talking about online collaboration. A multitude of vendors claim to make it possible, and the sheer number of solutions available is overwhelming. The collaboration landscape has become confusing and the way forward unclear. How do you find a solution that will work for you? One that will finally get your team on the same page, keep stakeholders up to date and eliminate collaboration overhead? Most solutions currently available don t deliver the promised improvements, so how do you avoid wasting your time on evaluating yet another non-solution? This white paper discusses the five broad approaches to collaboration on the market and presents the pros and cons of each. We also compare popular platforms and assess how well they support collaborative efforts. Collaboration Platforms: Five Common Approaches Each of the following approaches to collaboration has strengths and weaknesses. Some work well for complex projects but are likely to be too overhead-heavy for the majority of daily endeavors. Others are social but may sacrifice projectrelated functionality for friendliness. Still others may separate the project output the files from the context by keeping project discussions isolated in Project Management These tools some online and some not are designed to help project managers track complex multistep projects, assign specific tasks and track progress against specified milestones. Project management solutions can be a great fit if you re confronted by a complex task like planning a conference for 10,000 people or managing a major construction project efforts that are complicated enough to warrant hiring a project/program manager. They do a good job of managing dozens of stakeholders, many tasks and extended schedules. The vast majority of projects, however, do not take months and do not merit a dedicated project manager. Instead, most workers are involved in ad hoc, short-term efforts that emphasize collaboration rather than centralized project management. The bulk of their time is consumed by activities like vendor selection, sales forecasting, marketing campaign reporting, meeting notes creation and event planning. For the majority then, project management software is too complex, rigid and cumbersome to be generally useful. Depending on your needs, the drawbacks of project management solutions can be significant. They focus on assigning tasks and tracking progress. Only a few encourage discussion or ensure that team members work with the most current version of a document. Many are too heavy-weight for small projects, such as where a distributed work group creates a short document, reviewing and discussing each other s work during the process. In those situations, small groups tend to default to and Microsoft Word. 2

3 Examples of project management tools include Basecamp and Asana, which are cloud-based, and Microsoft Project. Work well for complex projects that require a dedicated manager Manage multiple stakeholders, tasks and extended schedules effectively Track and sequence dependencies accurately Focus on assigning tasks and tracking progress rather than encouraging discussion Don t ensure that teams work with the most current version of a document Impose too much overhead on small projects 2. File Sync & Share File sync & share approaches make files (e.g., MS Office document or PDF files) easily accessible across all of a user s devices and share the latest versions with team members. Basically, they re file servers, reinvented for the cloud. File sync & share tools are an improvement over conventional internal network-based file servers, because they are easier to use and because files are available at any time. They ensure that everyone is working from the most current documents. However, they are only able to share files among team members, and they do not support discussion. Discussion, or context, is at the heart of true collaboration. Lack of support for discussion is a major flaw of file sync & share solutions over time, users end up with multiple folders filled with multiple files and absolutely no record of discussions or decisions related to them. To address this gap, users find they need to conduct discussions via a separate tool, such as , with all its disadvantages. They must track project-related s scattered throughout their inboxes and match them up with the right files in the file sync & share solution. Not very efficient or collaborative. Because file sync & share approaches are file-oriented, they are limited in the following ways: They support file handling but not related discussions. Many projects and collaborative activities don t involve files or aren t file-centric. Files and folders tend to proliferate over time into an untrackable mess. Any record of discussions is lost in inboxes. Examples of file sync & share approaches include Dropbox, Box.com, and Google Drive. Back up files and offer easy access to them across all user devices Ensure that team members are working from the most current version of a document Do not support discussion or context Require users to use a separate tool, such as , to provide feedback Assume that collaboration is file-centric, which is not always the case 3

4 3. Corporate Social Networks These tools claim to bring the power of Facebook to an organization, helping employees get to know each other and fostering teamwork in the process. Like Facebook, employees post status updates that others can comment on. Employees can also attach documents to status updates or comments. Unfortunately, corporate social networks don t support serious collaboration, though they offer a convivial, lightweight way to discuss an issue that is not tied to a deliverable. Because they separate content from discussion, they will likely not eliminate the tendency to use when an issue turns serious. Corporate social networks can also be cumbersome to use. To figure out what s going on across multiple groups or organizations, you d need to explore the feed for individual or group comments and then open the files linked to status updates. Examples include Jive, Yammer, and Socialtext. Foster teamwork by enabling employees to get to know each other Offer a lightweight way to discuss an issue that is not tied to a deliverable Allow team members to attach documents to status updates or comments Do not focus on or support serious collaboration Separate content from discussion, thus encouraging continued use of Require that users explore the feed for comments and open files linked to social status updates 4. Cloud Productivity Tools With these tools, you create documents online, in a web browser, without needing to install applications on your computer. Online content creation replaces the MS Office model (local hard drive + local applications = locally stored files shared via ) with cloud-based productivity applications and storage. The advantages are typically lower cost, anydevice access and easier sharing of work with others. On the other hand, these tools retain many of the disadvantages of the old personal computing application model, preventing them from being a truly effective collaboration solution. The first disadvantage is that content creation is still application-centric. Users create a spreadsheet, presentation or word processing document. They can t mix and match multiple elements images, comments or uploaded files, for example ad hoc, which is how most project collaboration occurs. So as with file sync & share, most real project discussion and context occurs in, you guessed it, . And content or files are locked up in specific file formats. The second major issue with cloud productivity tools is that they are user-centric. They are designed so that a single user creates documents and uses to share them with others. They don t support a truly collaborative model in which teams converge in a single place to a share a document. 4

5 Examples include Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365. Create documents online, without requiring an offline editor Eliminate file-centricity and concerns about offline reviewers and unopened files Application centric model makes true collaboration difficult Single user centric model is inflexible for collaboration Tie comments to specific files, rather than to the whole project 5. Intranet and Legacy Approaches This category is comprised of dozens of pre-cloud solutions, such as internal file servers and intranets, as well as document, knowledge and content management products. Companies spent millions of dollars on them between 2000 and 2010, only to find they didn t reduce the flood of or eliminate collaboration overhead. Most of these solutions are falling out of favor because their base technologies don t readily adapt to today s cloud-centric, mobile deviceheavy business environment. Intranet and legacy approaches do allow teams to share information, which was a major achievement in They also provided a repository for the latest official version of a document. Good as far as it goes. Like file sync & share and document creation approaches, intranet and legacy approaches are document-centric. Team members must open documents and discussions are separated from content, so project meta-information is relegated to . volume is not significantly reduced. As we noted earlier, these heavy-weight, often-complex and hard-to-use approaches are not a good fit with the types of tasks that comprise a typical workday. Examples include Microsoft SharePoint, Documentum, file servers, and intranets. Allow teams to share information Offer a repository for the latest version of project documents Assume that collaboration is file-centric, which is not always the case Separate content from discussions, requiring users to open documents Relegate communications to Problems with version control, as file copies on user desktops become out of sync with the official repository and with other users copies. 5

6 Page-Based Collaboration In a class of its own, Samepage for Business was designed from the ground up to make organizing projects and collaborating easier via Page-Based Collaboration, avoiding most of the pitfalls of other collaboration solutions on the market. In Page-Based Collaboration: Each project gets its own Page that is always up-to-date and organizes all the information for a project: multiple documents, discussion, important dates, decisions, task lists and more. Pages can contain any number of Sub- Pages, letting you organize large projects into many sub-projects, each with their own information and access rights. Users collaborate by authoring or editing text directly on the Page, adding other content (such as files, images, and task lists) to the Page, and engaging in discussions with other users. A Page s users might each have different access rights (page owner, contributor, editor, reader) that control how they can each contribute. Content and discussion are displayed side-by-side on the Page, so that context is never lost within long threads or out-of-date files. To find the most up-to-date project status, just look at the Page or browse the News Feed. Users can easily embed diverse types of content including videos, images, task lists, maps, and events and more directly within the project Page. No need for the rest of the team to download separate files or deal with attachments. Users can also attach and synchronize files to the Page or even link to cloud-based files already stored in Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. All collaborators can easily access the Page from their connected computers or mobile devices. By using Page-Based Collaboration, Samepage successfully removes project management from threads and focuses teams on content creation and collaborative decision making. An intuitive and non-techy solution, Samepage makes it easy to set up and get started quickly on a project, regardless of its size and complexity. To sign up for Samepage for Business and streamline collaboration at your company, visit us at Samepage 111 N. Market Street, Sixth Floor San Jose, CA USA Toll free: Direct: + 1 (408)