There are hundreds of online collaborative tools out there that allow small businesses to improve collaboration internally within their teams or externally with clients and suppliers. Building on essential communication provisions such as telephones and broadband use of such tools can offer companies a great competitive advantage.
What are the best tools that give you value that you should consider? In this two-part blog article, we will explore 10 of the best available collaboration tools to help you improve teamwork, productivity and make your business more agile. We have collated this list with our clients in mind, most of whom are small to medium-sized businesses. Therefore the chosen tools can be applied in small and large companies alike and have free plans with scope to scale.
Slack
Instant messaging services
Slack is a well-known service that offers instant messaging and also files transferring. It is considered a great alternative to email communication to stop those long email threads.
Available on desktop, mobile platforms and even accessible through your web browser the service allows you to send direct messages or group messages through what is referred to as ‘channels’, which can be set up for specific departments or projects.
What further helps you streamline your workflow is that Slack integrates with over 2400 other applications including Outlook, Google Drive, Asana, Trello, Salesforce and Hubspot.
Some of Slack notable clients include NatWest, GlaxoSmithKline, Sky, PWC, Uber and Airbnb.
Pricing: Free plan available. Premium plans start from £5.25/user/month
Website: www.slack.com
Zoom
Online meeting tool
The cloud-based video and web conferencing platform for teams and customers have been the go-to tool for everyone since the pandemic hit and need no introduction. You can use this on a desktop or a mobile device as well as dialling in.
With features including video call recording, waiting rooms, breakout rooms and screen sharing lots of businesses have adopted this as a regular means of communication both internally and external of their business.
Some of Zoom notable clients include 20th Century Fox, Capital One, Zen Desk, Sophos, Autodesk and DocuSign.
Pricing: Free plan available. Premium plans start from £119.90/year
Website: www.zoom.us
Asana
Project management
Asana is one of the leading project management tools, sold as ‘the easiest way to manage team projects and tasks’. Whether you are a small team or have hundreds of collaborators you can plan and assign responsibility to each collaborator. Accessible through the web browser or on mobile devices as an app.
No need to reinvent the wheel when setting up projects as the tool offers various pre-made projects templates categorised by organisation function and ranging from an editorial calendar through to a business strategy plan and much more. What’s more, you can automate elements to streamline processes and your workflow, saving you time and making you more efficient.
Integrations – over 100+ including Zoom, Google Sheets, Gmail, Zapier, Salesforce and Slack.
Some of Asana’s notable clients include Amazon, Google, Deloitte, Sky, Vodafone, Spotify, Uber, Slack, Harvard University and PayPal.
Pricing: Free plan available. Premium plans start from £9.49/month
Website: www.asana.com
Miro
Online whiteboard
Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard that lets you bring teams together wherever they are and collectively share ideas and collaborate on the infinite whiteboard canvas. It has the functionality of a diagramming, flowchart and mind mapping software together with presentational features all with enterprise-grade security so you know your information is secure.
It can be used to create customer journey maps, wireframing, roadmaps, spring planning and much more. You can create your own template, use a pre-built template to save you time or draw on others expertise from the Miroverse community who have shared proven workflows, projects and frameworks.
Integrations – Microsoft Teams, Whereby, Slack, Airtable, Google Drive and Hubspot.
Some of Miro’s notable clients include Cisco, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Deloitte and TransUnion.
Pricing: Free plan available. Premium plans start from $8/month
Website: www.miro.com
Otter.ai
AI-powered transcriber
Hate taking notes at meetings? Well, Otter.ai is what you need, by joining meetings it can produce live transcriptions that you and other participants can annotate and highlight in real-time. This includes Zoom meetings!
Some of Otter.ai notable clients include IBM, Zoom and Dropbox.
Pricing: Free plan available. Premium plans start from $8.33/month
Website: www.otter.ai
