Hybrid working can make collaboration more difficult as employees can feel disconnected. Therefore it is important to find the right collaboration tools to ensure teams can work well together, as collaboration is crucial to business success. Adam Zoucha, MD EMEA at FloQast, explains how companies can give their staff the rights tools to collaborate effectively.
In today’s business world, entrepreneurs and CEOs are bombarded with advice on achieving success. From implementing the latest technology to adopting extreme productivity hacks, there’s no shortage of strategies promising a quick path to the top. More often than not, the difference between a struggling company and a flourishing one boils down to mastering the fundamentals and a flexible mindset that always reevaluates to identify process improvements.
Commercial success is built on efficiency and agility, if processes aren’t aligned with these objectives, with staff struggling with delays and misunderstandings, it will hinder an organisation.
Why collaboration is crucial for business success
In the post-pandemic age of hybrid working, when the vast majority of white-collar jobs are performed at least partly from home, there’s a very real risk that employees become disconnected. Though hybrid working undoubtedly benefits staff and organisations alike, it also limits those watercooler moments where colleagues can quickly address and resolve workflow issues, prioritise tasks and share feedback. These quick conversations remove ambiguity and can save significant time – and with the right processes and tools in place physical distance can be overcome.
Simply put, a root and branch review of collaboration should be priority number one for businesses looking to drive greater success. When properly facilitated, it allows for greater communication, reduced error and faster, better quality decisions. Teams can share documents, access updates, leave comments and so on. It also improves morale, as teams understand each other better.
The more closely connected different departments feel, the less friction there’ll be across the organisation. We’ve all experienced the frustration of being unable to access the right files, not being able to get a response, not being able to chat through the problem verbally. It grinds everything to a halt. High-quality collaboration does the opposite, speeding up essential work and enabling businesses to take the opportunities that matter.
How to empower collaboration through automation
Collaboration is partly down to the people themselves and the culture you grow within your company. But it’s also down to the tools they’re given to carry out their work.
Through our work, we know that by providing accounting teams with automated software to quickly and efficiently perform repetitive tasks, offer up the right information and visualise workflows, it can have a significant impact on the quality of collaboration within a company. Implementing the right tools can also increase accountants’ ability to access information, documents and project updates regardless of geographical location or time zone.
For example, when German-based mattress manufacturer, Emma, implemented automated accounting software to improve processes, its team remarked particularly on the impact it had on cross-border collaboration. Historically the company had struggled to see the bigger picture when it came to closing its financial statements each month, due to its team being located in multiple cities across the globe. They needed a good communication tool to illustrate team tasks and progress.
Akanksha Singla, Treasury Manager at Emma, said: “For the monthly closings, it actually makes it quite transparent to the other team members once we’ve signed off our tasks. They know that these are the tasks which are already taken care of, and what needs to be worked on next, even when tasks are dependent on others.”
Having a clear, accurate, automated picture of all the various tasks a team needs to complete – rather than relying on manually updated Gantt charts or to do lists, for example, eliminates the risk of duplicated work or stalled processes. Everyone knows what’s still to do and what can be ticked off. This is just one example of the kind of simple but impactful change teams can benefit from through automation.
Data visibility fosters collaboration
In addition to improving the nuts and bolts of team processes, it’s important to ensure your people can access the information they need in a form that helps them use it intelligently.
In accounting, for example, automating data discovery can enhance numerous processes and provide better insights through advanced tools. This provides a high level of transparency into financial data that isn’t available with spreadsheets. As a result, connected systems give accountants a more complete picture of financials, enabling them to identify fluctuations and problems much faster and make smarter business decisions.
The right tools for the job
There might be the temptation to look for the mythical tool that ticks every box, but even the most robust, overly complex systems can be used incorrectly and cause resentment amongst staff. Taking the time to determine which tools will serve your business best is important. For example, if you’re looking for a finance solution, does it support for the month end close, is it easily integrated or is it too complex for your requirements? Dispensing with older legacy systems is also important. Email, for example, is a highly problematic medium for collaborative efforts, both internally and with third parties. Emails require time to compose and respond to and may end up obscuring crucial information in extensive chains – which, in turn, can lead to siloing and missed deadlines.
Given the need for agility, it’s worth integrating real-time collaboration tools that facilitate a variety of functionalities, such as instant messaging, video conferencing and the simultaneous editing of documents. Real-time collaboration platforms also log changes and updates, so that the evolving status of a given document can be understood immediately by all users. It might sound simple, but a smooth collaboration process is far from universal. Getting to a point where the vast majority of your staff feel helped rather than hindered by their business software is no mean feat.
To get the most benefit from any platform it’s important to involve the staff who will be using it – where are their actual pain points, and what would most improve their day-to-day work? What would remove unnecessary stress? Correcting the challenges being felt on a daily basis with the right processes and tools can pay major dividends for the business as a whole.