3 IT solutions for more effective collaboration within your company

Nowadays, team collaboration represents one of the essential pillars of a modern company. Effective collaboration offers numerous competitive advantages and increases a company´s  value on the market. Constantly growing speed of everyday rhythm, distance and multilevel project management are the reasons why it´s important to put stress on collaboration process.

We offer you brief introduction of 3 IT solutions, thanks to which you can manage communication within one channel.

1. Collaborative CRM System

The CRM system, as a collaboration portal, offers broad spectrum of cooperation possibilities across various departments. In CRM, you share client data with the aim to maximize profit and increase customer satisfaction.

Example: Sales representatives fill all relevant data into the CRM system – based on these data, a marketing department can target its communication more precisely – at the end of the day, it´s reflected in business offers prepared by a sales department exactly according to customer requirements, as a result of interactions with customers via marketing.

“Companies having closely linked sales and marketing teams have customer retention rate 36% higher.” MarketingProfs

Sales Department

End of notes in a diary, calendar or note book. Each sales representative records data in the CRM system what guarantees that:

• client data are available also for other employees;
• managers have insight about work of sales representatives;
• information is available for various reports as well as for marketing purposes;
• sales representatives can use their time more effectively than answering internal emails;
• in case of employee departure, data generated by him stay in the system.

Marketing Department

Approaching customers via marketing activities can influence their decision-making. Without a properly filled-in CRM database, it is not possible to target the right customers. Based on the data from the CRM system, a list of customers is made, who are the recipients of newsletters, approached with satisfaction surveys, invited to various events, target of marketing campaigns and other activities.

Besides, thanks to interconnection of CRM with MailChimp, it is possible to send marketing materials directly via CRM what ensures that sales representatives have an overview of how customers responded to given content and based on this they can direct their following business activities.

Cooperation with other departments

Collaboration via the CRM system runs on the level of the marketing and sales departments or in cooperation with management as well as other company departments.

CRM can be linked to an economic software what´s beneficial for the economic department which can track key economic indicators of the company. What is more, thanks to the data in CRM, technical support has sufficient amount of data to perfectly serve a client.

Example: A customer place a request for service of his device at home via call centre. A call centre worker creates a new service request in the CRM system and assigns it to a service technician, who gets notified. Based on the notification, the service technician makes an appointment with the customer:

• in the event that during the service he finds out that he needs to order a spare part, the service technician records it in the CRM system and a worker in warehouse receives the request for the spare part allocation;
• if no need to change damaged parts is identified, the service technician marks the service request in the CRM system as solved, and subsequently, the billing department receives a request to issue an invoice.

2. Knowledge Management as a company encyclopaedia

The Knowledge Management solution offers its users a constant overview of up-to-date information across the entire company. The main aim of the solution is to get the right information to the right persons at the right time.

The process of providing services shall be described by clear and accurate terms. Thus, thanks to the solution, employees of a company will use unified language, what provides clients with relevant information no matter which branch they are visiting. Knowledge Management, serving as a company encyclopaedia, can easily help to fulfil this goal.

Companies, which decide to implement the solution for Knowledge Management, will gain:

• central corporate terminology;
• unification of organizational culture;
• effective interdepartmental exchange of information;
• immediate access to up-to-date information;
• transparent dashboards;
• reduced time for searching information and more fluent business processes;
• user-friendly customer environment and modern look of the system;
• increased employee efficiency and customer satisfaction;
• a tool enabling to reach strategic goals much quicker.

Competitive Advantage

The modern solution for knowledge management is used by many prominent companies in Slovakia, such as O2, Orange, VÚB bank or Raiffeisenbank in the Czech Republic.

“By the implementation of the Knowledge Management solution, we have gained a tool which makes creation and access to up-to-date information across the headquarters, bank branches and call centres much more effective. It allows us to communicate with customers comprehensively when informing on bank products as well as follow unified internal policy more easily. Our employees have constant access to latest changes, internal policy, manuals, directives and norms.” Tomáš Tyl, Projektový manažér, Raiffeisenbank

Knowledge Management is suitable for all company types and sizes. Each company can adapt the solution according to its needs, so it can easily respond to changes on the market thanks to a reliable system storing existing information and at the same time gathering new ones.

3. Platform for Team Collaboration – Microsoft Teams

Via the Microsoft Teams platform, a part of Office 365, it´s possible to cooperate across multiple teams. The software is able to collaborate remotely on work tasks with colleagues as well as clients.

Working Groups

• in its simplest form, the Teams application enables users to create groups within which they can cooperate – write down notes, upload files or share desktops;
• within one team, it´s possible to create multiple discussion rooms or channels, thanks to which it´s easy to follow conversation development;
• private groups offer a possibility to share content only with selected members, on the other hand, open groups contain information for wide range of users;
• conversations in groups are visible for all its members on the main screen and one can send also private messages;
• thanks to notifications, users are informed about all updates in individual groups;
• the application contains a library with emoticons, GIF or sticks for more colourful communication in digital environment.

Online meetings

• via Microsoft Teams, you can set up audio conferences, video conferences and web conferences;
• as many as 10 000 users can join online webinars no matter where they are;
• users can join meetings via mobile phones and it´s possible to call other person directly from the application;
• in online meetings, there is a phone number for making calls from more than 400 locations worldwide, thanks to which people without internet connection can join as well;
• the application offers reliable, secured and high-quality audio and video communication.

Meeting planner

• the platform offers an overview of planned meetings, its time, subject and list of participants.

Virtual support

• to increase productivity, there´s approx. 24 robots with various functions (T-Bot can answer basic and the most frequent questions regarding Teams and Statsbot can send various summaries, e.g. via Google Analytics).

Customization

• in Microsoft Teams, you can customize the environment in a way that it meets requirements of individual groups;
• the application offers a platform able to extend and open API interfaces with general accessibility;
• thanks to the “Bookmarks”, users can create separate channels and arrange their conversations by their themes, so they have quick access to the documents used the most;
• thanks to the Connector model, Microsoft Teams provides updates and notifications from third parties.

Integration with other services

• the Microsoft Teams platform is integrated with Microsoft Office 365, what enables using other services, such as Word, Excel, SharePoint, PowerPoint, Skype, Exchange, OneNote, Planner, Power BI or Yammer.

Data security

• data sent by the Microsoft Teams are encrypted and covered by a transparent operation model without constant access to user information;
• verification runs in multiple phases what increases identity protection;
• the application meets key standards of data protection, including ISO 27001, HIPPA, SOC 2 and model clauses of the European Union.

If you are considering implementation of a platform, which could help your company make the collaboration process more effective, do not hesitate and contact us.