What is collaboration?
Collaboration is when two individuals, but usually several people, work together as efficiently as possible to achieve a certain outcome. Collaboration is not confined to a project, a specific group or an organisation but occasionally crosses company boundaries. Unlike cooperation, where people work with others to help them achieve their individual goals, collaboration is about working together on a shared goal, with shared ownership, continual coordination and development. It, therefore, extends beyond a simple allocation of in-house tasks.
Ways to collaborate effectively.
Aside from all modern communication tools, user-friendly, no-code software is key in this context. Being able to see which users are active or which user is currently editing a file is essential.
What should companies consider?
Certain corporate set-ups can embody a collaborative approach.
Flat hierarchies.
Traditionally, leadership is thought of as a top-down process. However, this is not particularly compatible with the concept of collaboration. Less pronounced hierarchies, critical questioning of all proposed solutions, working together to solve a central issue, and junior employees being able to swap ideas with more senior staff drive collaboration.
Making work more flexible.
Actively collaborating means working asynchronously. The longer time span alone means employees and other project participants have to be able to organise their work flexibly through remote working, customisable digital tools and individual methods of addressing the task at hand. Only then will those involved – particularly skilled workers with a high chance of changing jobs – choose to contribute their expertise to a project in the long term.
Availability of technical infrastructure.
Addressing challenges and sharing insights, information, and content is impossible without the appropriate technical infrastructure – particularly if collaboration is cross-departmental and cross-organisational. Teams need the necessary hardware and software to collaborate effectively. Companies, therefore, need to be happy to make the investments required to ensure collaborative success.
What are the benefits of collaboration?
Collaboration can improve competitiveness, foster innovative capacity, cut costs and improve employer branding.
Becoming more competitive.
Collaboration is about sharing knowledge. Helping all parties gain a similar understanding and making processes more transparent improves efficiency. Efficiency, in turn, minimises errors (more reliable output), makes for faster processes (more output), and enables responsiveness to unexpected market events (high agility). This optimises value creation and competitiveness overall.
Cutting costs.
Enhancing cross-departmental efficiencies unlocks the potential for significant cost-cutting. Lower error rates, higher output, and agility—as highlighted above—all ensure streamlined processes. Other benefits include increased employee satisfaction resulting in lower staff turnover (recruiting, onboarding, and offboarding costs), an optimised customer experience (fewer returns, repeat customers), and a higher customer retention rate (lower admin costs due to fewer subscription cancellations). Companies can also work with software tools that automate collaborative processes to make them even more efficient and cost-effective.
Strengthening the capacity for innovation.
Collaboration brings together people from different teams, departments, and even organisations. Having a range of competencies and backgrounds and being able to critically question concepts are key innovation drivers. If companies invest in open communication, they can create a safe space for experimentation where unusual and innovative solutions can be developed.
Where does Lobster come in?
Lobster helps companies deliver their digital transformation strategies in a people-centric way by getting employees excited about digitalisation and automation. Investing in the theory of collaboration but not following through with practical steps to implement it is no help to anyone.
This is why the Lobster Group developed the data integration software Lobster_data, a multifunctional tool that even non-IT specialists can quickly learn how to use.
With a focus on user-friendliness, Lobster_data allows users to shape real-time business processes from any browser-enabled device anywhere in the world. The state-of-the-art web application and its easy-to-use interface simplify the onboarding process, allowing employees to communicate and collaborate via the application with only two days of training.
Lobster_data Release 4.5 has enhanced the solution’s collaborative capabilities thanks to the Workflow Module. This orchestration add-on for building process chains can incorporate human-to-human and human-to-machine interactions as well as machine-driven processes (M2M). In addition, end users and external third parties with the necessary rights can interact with the processes created in the workflow module via the DataCockpit Module.
