6 Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Use Team Collaboration Apps

What you will see in this article:

• What Are Team Collaboration Apps?

• Centralized Work Hub

• Seamless Communication

• History of Past Work

• Improves Accountability and Transparency

• Facilitates Remote Work and Flexible Schedules

• Enhances Project Management and Productivity

• Conclusion: Huge Productivity Gains

What Are Team Collaboration Apps?

As defined by techtarget.com, team collaboration apps are different software "and online services available to companies and individuals that enable them to feasibly work together on common projects, regardless of their physical location."

Centralized Work Hub

The core benefit of these apps is having one centralized hub for all company communication, files, tasks, and processes. Instead of emails getting lost and documents scattered, everything lives in one place everyone can access.

I used Microsoft Teams as the executive business coordinator to track financials like ad revenue and expenses in shared Excel files. 

As managing editor for design, I could easily find past layout files and share new versions with the team. When I was looking for articles when creating my layouts, they were all in one folder. 

When I couldn't find the password document for our Canva account, I quickly found it in seconds in the Resource channel instead of searching for minutes in my email because the advisor sent it to me.

Seamless Communication

Effective communication is the backbone of any successful business. With collaboration apps, you can chat, video call, and share documents effortlessly. 

For instance, Microsoft Teams allows real-time messaging, video conferencing, and file sharing. As a small business, clear communication ensures everyone is on the same page, leading to better decision-making and smoother operations.

Email is outdated for internal communication and file sharing. These apps enable open team conversations, @ mentions, direct messages, shared file co-editing, and more in one place.

Coming from an environment where communication was fragmented, having this centralized hub in Microsoft Teams significantly improved clarity for my teams, whether coordinating ad campaigns or creating our training materials.

History of Past Work

Small businesses often face turnover, and new team members need context to hit the ground running. Collaboration apps maintain a history of past work, making it easy for newcomers to catch up. 

Whether it's reviewing project timelines, accessing previous meeting notes, or understanding client interactions, having this historical data readily available fosters continuity and efficiency. 

Sometimes at the newspaper, we would have turnover every six months because the students' schedules changed each semester, and they prioritized other things over reporting for us. Having a history of past work to look at when training them helped to give good examples of what to do.

Another big plus is these apps create a knowledge base of your work over time. With clear threads, file histories, and searchable archives, context is always preserved. 

In my executive business coordinator role, I organized part of our Microsoft Teams archive to have a consistent record of past work that would make it easy for our historian. 

The historian's job requires them to do archival research for any needed articles. If the archive is not organized or available, answering the essential questions with quick deadlines is much more challenging.

Improves Accountability and Transparency

These apps foster more accountability with open channels and archives than email trails. All stakeholders can stay informed and on the same page. 

As a manager across roles like senior editor, I appreciated assigning clear owners for tasks, looping in others as needed, and enabling asynchronous work by letting teammates catch up on conversations.

Facilitates Remote Work and Flexible Schedules

In addition to benefits for communication and organization, team collaboration apps enable flexible and remote work policies that are becoming increasingly important. These apps make it as easy for distributed teams to collaborate as co-located ones.

During my time at The Exponent, most of the team worked remotely. We had varying schedules due to classes, jobs, and other commitments. 

Microsoft Teams allowed us to work asynchronously and accommodate everyone's needs efficiently. Members could chime into conversations, share updates, and review work independently instead of being present during rigid hours. This flexibility increased our productivity and team satisfaction.

For small businesses, offering remote work and flexible schedules is a robust hiring and retention tool, especially for attracting top talent. Collaboration apps provide the technological backbone to make flexible and remote policies feasible.

Enhances Project Management and Productivity

Beyond just consolidating communication and work, collaboration apps are specifically designed to boost team organization and productivity. 

Features like shared calendars, task assignments, file organization, integrated third-party app support, and workflow automation make planning, prioritizing, and streamlining processes easier.

In my experience at The Exponent, having a centralized hub in Microsoft Teams to map out deadlines, divide assignments, and automate notifications significantly increased our organization compared to the haphazard system of in-person meetings, spreadsheet tracking, and sharing Google Docs through email. 

The clear accountability for who was responsible for what, combined with better process systematization, allowed us to produce higher-quality work more efficiently as a team.

For small businesses operating with limited resources, squeezing maximum productivity out of employees is crucial. Team collaboration apps are a must for avoiding chaos, disorganization, and lost productivity from poor processes and fragmented information.

Conclusion: Huge Productivity Gains

As a small business owner or professional, embracing team collaboration apps is a strategic move. Leveraging this tool will enhance communication, boost productivity, and position your business for success. The upfront investment pays dividends in productivity.

From firsthand experience taking on many different leadership roles at The Exponent, Microsoft Teams was indispensable for staying aligned and optimizing our small team's output. 

So, consider integrating collaboration apps into your business processes and watch your small business thrive.