Ways to Address Enterprise Collaboration Challenges

CIO Applications| Friday, April 02, 2021

Many businesses do not consider teamwork to be an essential organizational value. Senior management in such companies fosters cooperation on occasion, such as for work on company-wide initiatives.

Fremont, CA: It is essential for strategy to come before technology to ensure successful collaboration. An organization must assess its collaboration needs, decide on and execute policies to improve collaboration and foster a collaborative culture. Only then will an organization be able to determine which collaboration technologies and resources are ideally suited to the strategy it has created.

An organization can face a variety of strategic and technical challenges on the way to successful collaboration. The following are some of the most popular ones, along with ideas for how to solve them.

Let us look at some collaboration challenges:

Lack of Collaboration Strategy

Many businesses do not consider teamwork to be an essential organizational value. Senior management in such companies fosters cooperation on occasion, such as for work on company-wide initiatives.

Solution: Collaboration should be viewed as one of the company's main paths, and a collaboration plan should be established accordingly. It should promote company-wide teamwork and encourage each employee to learn how to work together effectively. Employees should be able to solicit input from others, provide positive feedback, negotiate, and reach a consensus, for instance.

Misinterpretation Collaboration

The terms partnership and cooperation are often used interchangeably, but there is a significant distinction between them. When people collaborate, they work together and share knowledge and resources to help each other achieve their goals. Collaboration, on the other hand, means working together for a common purpose. It leads to the creation of something unique that is the product of a joint team effort rather than individual effort.

Solution: An organization must ensure that the correct definition of cooperation is woven into its strategy and that relevant activities are coordinated in compliance with this strategy. For example, an organization should encourage cross-company engagement, idea exchange, and discussion, which contributes to more collaborative working methods.