![\"3](\"http:\/\/www.ghosh.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/3steps1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nObjectives<\/h1>\n
First, determine what problem(s) you\u2019re trying to solve. \u00a0Do you want to improve communications between engineering and marketing? \u00a0Perhaps you need a better way for new employees to find internal answers more quickly. \u00a0Or maybe you need better ways to communicate across geographies and time zones, but everyone’s email is overflowing.<\/p>\n
Put Stakes in the Ground<\/h1>\n
Next, think of the givens that you can’t change. \u00a0For example, perhaps your company management uses PowerPoint religiously for presentations and finance folks use Excel. \u00a0If the engineers use Google docs, then you may have to think about whether you need to use both, or which constituents could more easily switch over. \u00a0The choice of desktop productivity tools could have a real impact on what collaboration tools you use. \u00a0And if knowledge management is a goal, consolidating formats and repositories will make it easier to build an knowledge repository.<\/p>\n
Take Small Steps<\/h1>\n
Then, take small steps. \u00a0Don’t rush out and sign-up for a whole bunch of tools because you think you’ll need one in each category. \u00a0For example, if you solve doc collaboration, then you may find it better to use a shared spreadsheet for task management than a dedicated and unintegrated point solution.<\/p>\n
Then, you can start to narrow down choices. They all have pros & cons, and everyone will have subjective preferences.<\/p>\n
For example, at WaveMaker<\/a>, we needed to solve geo and time zone spread of team and we use MS Office for most of our docs. Thus, we went with Yammer (as better tool than email) but it’s weak for doc collaboration, so we also use online SharePoint (because MS Office doc collab is key and Yammer is now owned by Microsoft, even though still poorly integrated). We use Salesforce.com for CRM, but found Chatter also lacking at doc collab, which was more important to us than CRM integration.<\/p>\n And when you move to a cloud storage solution, here’s a comparison of main methods for cloud doc collaboration<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"