As a new business, you may have a great team. Perhaps some of your team members work in your office, while others are offsite, and you outsource others.
Whichever situation describes you, you’ll find that online collaboration tools are helpful to improve productivity and efficiency. In fact, studies show you can improve productivity by 20-30% using online tools.
With collaboration tools, you can share ideas and documents, communicate, and work together on shared projects.
In this article, we look at five of the best collaboration tools for startups.
#1: Zoho Projects
A powerhouse project management tool, Zoho is great for startups, small, and large businesses. It has a plan rate to fit any budget and business size.
You can plan projects, share documents, assign tasks, communicate, create and view reports and much more.
By setting tasks and task lists, you are well on your way to meeting the milestones you set in Zoho.
You’ll appreciate the Gantt charts (a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule), that provide a detailed visual of your schedule and progress of your tasks.
What’s more, your team can log billable and non-billable hours into time-sheets, and then use the built-in integration with Zoho invoice.
#2: Liquid Planner
This project management app can handle both project and resource management with ease. You’ll find roll-up reports, interactive Gantt charts and automated scheduling tools.
You can even reassign work as needed for those times when an employee is sick or on vacation.
Liquid Planner uses predictive planning technology. You don’t have to guess when projects will be done, because the software does it for you.
Documents, projects, and reports are always available from the cloud.
#3: Slack
This terrific team messaging app is used by millions of remote team members around the world. This tool works in real-time to help your staff stay better organized.
It also includes notification and reminder settings for better tracking of conversations.
A unique aspect of Slack is the ability to use hashtags to highlight keywords in your discussions. This makes it easy for you to use Slack’s search feature when you need to find the chat histories you are looking for quickly.
Within Slack, you can direct messages to a single person, a group of people, or even your entire team. In addition, Slack supports voice calls and video chatting. It’s easy to find your messages, calls, files, and projects all in one place.
You can also integrate Slack with DropBox and Google Drive.
#4: Asana
This is one of the oldest and most well-known platforms for collaboration.
With Asana, your startup can not only track the work of your team, but you can do the following:
- Create to-do lists for ongoing projects
- Set reminders for deadlines
- Send messages
- Organize projects in board or list format
- Utilize a search function to find past work quickly
- Use the Timeline feature to track projects
#5: Podio
A relative newcomer, Podio is quite adept at helping small, growing companies run their businesses.
Podio integrates with Google Drive, DropBox, GoToMeeting, Excel, and your email as well as a host of others.
With Podio extensions, you can add time and expense tracking, too.
You’ll also find a Kanban board, Gantt charts, email, chat apps, a server for sharing documents, and project management tools with Podio.
Final Thoughts
You’ll find that collaboration tools will up the efficiency of your startup team, and that includes staff on the ground as well as your outsourced team.
Gone are the days of long, boring meetings. Instead, you have online software that lets you share and communication in a cloud-based environment. You can talk with your team, share ideas, make task lists, and assign responsibilities.
It’s vital that your startup team members are all on the same page, no matter their location. You’ll find that productivity increases when everyone can share, communicate, and collaborate in an online cloud environment.
Are you a new startup ready to succeed? Are you looking to get your new business off the ground and watch it rise to success? We are here for you. We can help answer your questions and guide you through the process. Outsource your HR duties, finances, payroll and more to us. Contact Escalon today to get started.
