Thanks to advances in technology, we have begun to rethink how we structure our work arrangements. We’re no longer stuck with a traditional nine-to-five workday – many of us work from home offices or on the road. Indeed, we’re often working together with co-workers around the globe, and not just in the cubicle next door.
This means great things for some businesses. People are able to develop a more suitable work/life balance, and often working from home without the distractions of an office setting can mean better productivity.
All that said, one of the challenges with the new decentralised work force is collaboration. It’s not always easy to work on a project where half the team is in a different time zone, the other half work from home, and your project manager is always traveling between.
This is where file sharing and collaboration systems really come into their own. Google Docs, DropBox, Box and many more platforms on the market all offer cloud-based storage for documents which can be shared between team members, clients, or other stakeholders. These have version control (great when you’re trying to figure out which version of a document is the final), different permission levels, and the backups are all handled externally. Some systems even have project management modules, meaning you can manage your entire team’s efforts on a project: documents, timesheets, notes, client contacts, you name it – all from one platform. The problem of multiple versions of a document floating around emails and individual hard drives? Completely solved by a central repository.
This article from PCMag goes into more detail about some of the most popular platforms, and why you might want to consider using cloud-based storage and collaboration.
A file sharing solution may be just what you need to keep everyone working on the same page, regardless of where they are or how they work.