5 Efficient Online Communication Tools For Your Business

In this age and day, more and more businesses are choosing remote work over traditional offices. The reason could be the ongoing pandemic or an offshore team at the other end of the world. Whichever the reason might be, a remote team requires any business to opt for online communication tools for smoother communication.

Previously, video calls and instant messaging used to be the primary requirement for any communication. However, as technology advanced, the need for a more sophisticated collaboration system emerged. This gave birth to various new online communication platforms where people can easily sign up for free and start communicating with their team.

Below are five efficient online communication for your business for better collaboration.

IMAGE: UNSPLASH

Video Calls

Video calls are slowly becoming the major mode of online communication in most organizations. Gone are the days of long, boring emails stuffed with too many details. Whether it is a quick chat with the team or a long meeting, video calls ensure that all of your team members are on the same page and contribute to the task at hand.

Back in the day, Skype used to be the most common video calling program. Apps and programs such as Zoom and Google Meet have become popular choices in recent days. Programs such as Microsoft Teams and RingCentral video also come with unique features for better communication within teams. Some of these programs and apps are free to use, and some require a premium account.

Note-Taking And Documentation

Workplace calls for note-taking and sometimes, advanced note-taking. If you’re working in a paperless office, you will acknowledge the importance of note-taking apps and programs. The most common programs for this are Microsoft Word and OneNote. Google Docs and Keep are also popular choices for note-taking and documentation. Collaborating with your team members over these platforms is also fairly easy.

If you are taking notes on your phone, you can always try Evernote which comes with some advanced features such as snapping a photo of an item and saving it on a note. Notion is also a very hyped and effective note-taking app with unique features of its own, and connecting it with Zapier allows you to connect it to thousands of other useful apps.

Online Faxing

Sending large numbers of documents anywhere in the world might seem like a hassle. But with the development of various online fax services, this task has seemingly become less daunting. They come with fully hosted cloud systems that can accommodate up to 25,000 recipients at once. The system is fully encrypted, so your privacy remains uncompromised. You can also choose to delete the fax after sending it.

Services like InterFAX usually come with global support, so that you can use them from anywhere in the world. For every service, there are regular and advanced features for smooth operations. You can also customize the faxes and add user credentials.

Project Tracking And Collaboration

Is your team maintaining large projects? Are you tired of writing on a whiteboard for every team member to see and collaborate on? You can easily switch to online collaboration programs. Asana and Trello are two trending apps for tracking projects, assigning tasks to team members, and tracking responsibilities.

Some of them might seem a little complex at the beginning with the whole task, cards, and board system, but once you start using it, you can quickly get the hang of it. These apps are also great for communicating with your team members through the built-in chat system.

Other similar apps are Jira and Slack. Most of these programs are free, but some require a paid version for all the features to be accessible.

Visual Collaboration

Remote teams require remote meetings, and visual collaboration can be quite challenging. Especially, when it comes to documents that require input from multiple participants. This can call for long email chains where every participant receives the document, enters information, and sends it back to the other participants. It can become a tedious and time-consuming process.

Apps like Fuze allow you to share documents in real-time during video calls and lets participants draw or work on them simultaneously. It also has a whiteboard feature that comes of great use during meetings. Participants can draw on it which is very useful during online meetings. The app is mostly free except for some features.

There are other similar visual collaboration apps such as Miro and Conceptboard. Some of these whiteboards can stretch up to 20 meters in length, making them ideal for team brainstorming.

Online collaboration tools are becoming part and parcel of every organization. With more and more apps and programs popping up every day, the possibilities of finding one that caters to your specific needs are endless. However, if your organization requires apps of specific criteria, you can always choose to create apps or programs for in-house use. The task might be daunting, but you can easily run a cost-benefit analysis to see whether you want to spend money after multiple apps or program subscriptions or quickly build an app to use for a particular project.