Remote teams can give your business access to qualified talent from all over the world; helping you choose the best employees and diversify your roster. With remote teams come challenges, however; such as communication, meetings, and other obstacles that distance alone can offer. Here are four technologies that remote teams need to invest in to keep things running smoothly in 2019.
1. Team Management/Productivity Software
Having an online platform to meet on, assign projects, and have discussions is one of the best ways to unify your remote team and easily reach each member. Here you can assign tasks with deadlines to each member of the team, send and receive messages, have discussions in a chat-room like style, and much more.
This advanced software helps organize teams of all sizes and geographical locations, so wherever your team is in the world, you’ll all be on the same page more often. This also helps increase everyone’s accountability since everyone on the team will be aware of the other team members’ responsibilities.
With easy to use interfaces, powerful tools, and a manageable price tag, team management or productivity software is technology, your business will want to invest in to help manage your remote teams. Don’t let the fact that your team members are located in different places slow you down. Some of the most successful teams have remote members!
Remember that communication is key to managing a team of any kind, and having the right platform to communicate on can mean all the difference in whether or not messages are relayed correctly.
2. Conference Calling Services
If you’re looking for a quick and simple way to upgrade your team’s communication, investing in conference calling software is just what you need. This easy to use, web-based software will help you connect with team members and clients from anywhere in the world, free from long-distance or multi-user charges on your phone bill.
Conference calling services often come with extra features as well to make your remote team feel even closer. Video conferencing and screen-sharing software can help you share and receive information, and talk face-to-face with your team in a conference call style.
Many conferences calling services include these great extras free of charge, so you’ll only have to pay your monthly or yearly service fee to have access to them. This is truly a better option than attempting to talk long-distance on traditional phone plans or purchasing expensive screen sharing or video conferencing software separately.
With conference calling services, your calls will be web-based and therefore secure and stable. You’ll also be able to include more users in the call than with traditional phone-based services (with some conference services supporting up to 1,000 callers). This means you can have large meetings or even training seminars via your conference services.
Not to mention, a conference calling service with video conferencing can make hiring new remote team members easier by providing a platform from which to conduct interviews. Video or phone interviews eliminate the need for travel and therefore save everyone time and travel expenses.
3. Cloud Storage
If you haven’t at least looked into cloud storage yet, you’re truly missing out on one of the best technologies available on the web. Remember the days of flash drives and email attachments? Countless downloads and uploads? Cloud storage is effectively eliminating the need for either one of these technologies.
Cloud storage keeps all of your important documents, pictures, projects, etc, stored in one place, which you can give anyone on the team access to. You can create a team drive specifically for team projects, allowing for easy access to files and projects by individual team members.
Cloud storage is secure and relatively cheap. Dropbox provides 2GB for free, and Google Drive provides up to 15GB of free storage, each having paid options for larger storage needs. If you need 1TB or 100TB or storage, cloud storage is your best option. The files can be accessed from anywhere by anyone with the proper privileges.
This technology will help your team access information more quickly and easily since everything will be located on a single server. You’ll get to choose who gets access to which parts of the server as well, so unauthorized users can’t access manager files.
4. Collaboration Tools
Depending on the industry you work in, you may have access to real-time collaboration tools via cloud servers. These are present in many fields such as web or app development, where teams can collaborate on a project in real-time. Imagine how much more productive your team would be if you could all work on the same project simultaneously, with edits appearing instantaneously.
Collaboration tools come in all shapes and sizes, but the best ones are cloud-based, so they can be accessed from anywhere. Your remote team will want to look into acquiring such tools if you plan to beat the competition in the coming years.
Conclusion
Businesses are constantly changing, with remote teams becoming more and more essential to certain industries. It is vital to your team’s success to have the right tools to work with to increase productivity, communication, and collaboration among your team members. Technology is continuing to evolve to make remote teams closer and the world smaller than ever before. Don’t wait to acquire technology that will help your team rise above the competition.
