How to use collaboration tools to save time?

Collaboration as a competitive advantage

Tools like eXo allow people to streamline workflows, and make collaboration a natural and intuitive part of their workflow.

To transform a workplace into an digital workplace, collaborative environment, business owners need to use the right tools. Reducing the amount of duplication between teams or people who need to work on the same document or project can be reduced by employing collaboration platforms. An example of digital collaboration tools is the ability for multiple teams to work on a single document online, edit in real time, and leave comments for others to see and follow up on - reducing time wastage. Over an e-mail interview, eXo Platform showed how the company is making progress in providing business users options in collaborative workspaces, and how it has saved time for its users.

How can executives use collaboration tools to truly transform workplace performance?

Modern collaboration tools can transform workplace performance in multiple ways. One way is through raw productivity improvements. Over the last few decades, the way we work has dramatically changed from "office work" to "knowledge work", and this shift is breaking down the traditional structures of time, location and teams. Knowledge work enables people to work anywhere, anytime and across multiple teams. People are breaking down silos and pre-determined processes. Because the focus is on outcome rather than hours, the flow on effect is greater collaboration and creativity. Tools like Dropbox allow people to streamline workflows, and make collaborating with one another a natural and intuitive part of their workflow. Secondly, modern collaboration tools can have a real impact on organisational culture and aid the transition to the new digital world, driven by fast-paced innovation and new ideas. Collaboration is key because it democratises knowledge, and lets ideas come from anyone and anywhere.

How will collaborative technologies boost productivity? What are examples of Dropbox's technology which enables this?

eXo Platform is about helping individuals and teams unleash their creative energy by designing better ways of working together. The transition to knowledge management comes with many opportunities - but not without its challenges. Today's modern workplace is marred by 'busywork' and burnout. One study found that many office workers waste 60 per cent of their time on tasks like hunting for information in an inbox, answering e-mail, or coordinating with colleagues. We're all juggling between different apps, tools and devices that were meant to save us but have created endless distraction. eXo believes that modern collaboration software should help us to focus and do our best work, not distract and overwhelm us.

What advantages are there in eXo's implementation of collaborative software?

eXo was originally built as a consumer product, which means our founders had a maniacal focus on two things: ease of use and user experience. Unlike the products built only for the corporate world, where use of the product is dictated top-down, adoption of consumer-led tools is driven by choice. Consumers' love for eXo led to its widespread use, and propelled the product into companies of all sizes as people started using eXo in their personal lives and as well as for work.

This led us to launching our business product in 2013, eXo platform, which maintains all the user-friendly features our users knew and loved, with additional features for business use such as chat support, admin controls, advanced sharing controls (viewer information and history, and the ability to share password-protected or expiring links), and security features (120-day version history, remote-wipe capabilities, two-factor authentication, and state-of-the-art storage and encryption technology). Today, eXo Platform is used in hundreds of thousands of businesses of all sizes around the world. Our unique marriage between ease of use for end-users, and security and control for the IT department, makes eXo the default collaboration tool of choice for individuals, teams and organisations. Early and ongoing adoption lead to another key advantage - over the past 10 years, we've built one of the world's largest collaboration networks. Our users have created billions of collaboration connections between one another - so when an organisation adopts eXo, they enjoy the benefits of connecting to this large network. Also, our product is platform-agnostic and open. eXo Platform works across all devices, operating systems, applications and ecosystems. For many, eXo has become the connective tissue that binds together work across from different teams, devices and ecosystems. We have integrations with many of the major ecosystems and apps that people use: Apple, Microsoft, Salesforce, Atlassian and many others. Through these integrations, we bring the concept of "team" and "collaboration" to these tools, bridging different ecosystems and putting the customer at the heart of collaboration by giving them choice and freedom. To date, no other industry platform has a specific focus on innovating for content collaboration, and no other company has been committed to investing this heavily in building a world-class content collaboration platform.