Business environments today are vastly different than they were 10 years ago. With home-based and flexible working arrangements becoming increasingly popular, businesses of all sizes are looking for better ways to communicate with customers and colleagues throughout the world. This has led to the development of numerous tools used to help effectively collaborate and synchronize business communications, and some of these tools are more effective than others.
Glip
Glip is a service that is geared around tasks: instructions for starting a task, documenting who is working on what, and scheduling task completion. By using Glip to keep track of your tasks, you’ll also be able to track text chats with groups of correspondents or individuals. It is an especially useful tool for small groups, especially those that are collaborating on documents or pictures.Glip can also integrate with popular services that your team is already using, including Mailchimp, Hangouts, GitHub, and Dropbox, among many others.
The creators of Glip state that the team collaboration platform is designed to make small businesses operate more effectively. Currently, the average small business owner is using multiple apps to collaborate with their customers, team, and coworkers. Instead of dealing with this clutter, Glip is intended to be one place in which conversations can take place with anyone from anywhere. The service is also supported on tablets and smartphones.
HipChat
HipChat is an Internet service for private/internal instant messaging and chat. As well as offering group and one-on-one chat capabilities, it also offers video calling, cloud based file storage, and a searchable message history. The team chat functions allows for file sharing and task discussions in real-time with clients, project collaborators, and colleagues via unlimited chat rooms, and administrative controls allow managers to choose exactly who has access to the secure network.
This tool also offers numerous benefits for synchronized communication. Through live streams, you’ll be able to share documents and images instantly with your entire team. You’ll be able to use @mentions in order to direct your conversations to the right person, and screen sharing and video calling are also supported. Since HipChat is also part of the Atlassianfamily, numerous integrations are also available for Mailchimp, Zendesk, Bitbucket, and many more.
Hall
Hall is a team collaboration application that is used by a variety of Fortune 500 companies for internal team communications. This application synchronizes across all connected devices, ensuring that businesses and team members never miss out on notifications within their internal communications. Key features include chat, file sharing, secure communication, and groups. Since the app can be integrated for Box, GitHub, Dropbox, and more, Hall serves as a great communication tool for collaboration, and unlike other team communication platforms, Hall doesn’t restrict storage space or put any limits on the number of users.
Yammer
Yammer is a popular business communication tool, serving as the Facebook-style social network for Microsoft. Like Facebook, Yammer offers a “news feed” to provide updates from your colleagues, and it also features information about your groups, recent activity, and a window for pop up chats. A cloud-based document storage system is available, allowing you to find colleagues with the skills that you need to complete a certain project.
There are a variety of reasons that businesses of all sizes should be using Yammer to synchronize their communications and improve their efficiency:
- Use private Yammer groups to expedite the decision making process
- Upload files directly to Yammer to share across a group
- Create and standardized project notes in real-time
- Extend Yammer with apps, including SAP, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce, and Microsoft SharePoint
Switch
Switch.co is a phone system built to house all calling, messaging, and video services in the same place. This business tool offers voice products that keep the way that you work in mind, providing a cloud-based platform, including tools designed to give businesses synchronized communications across various devices. By using Switch, you’ll be able to:
- Work from anywhere, allowing you to take your business phone number with you wherever you go.
- Easily customize team settings to organize customer support, sales, and other departments.
- Control your calls with features like call recording, visual voicemail, video calls, and three-way calling.
Best of all, Switch allows for Microsoft Office 365 integration with business phone, allowing organizations to manage and track all of their communications in one place, reduce time-consuming IT maintenance, and empower the workforce to access business communications from anywhere. You’ll also be able to have context for your conversations by using Switch profiles, shared documents, and calendar invites.
If your business needs to synchronize communications, there are several great tools that can help you. Allow one of these platforms to improve your business communication strategy and team productivity.
