In 2005 Collaboration is Key

Perhaps you're a small business owner wondering how you and your employees managed to make it through the last year. You vow to make this year the year your business grows. You've got a great product or service and you've hired some really good employees. But you realize that things internally just aren't working quite as smoothly as you'd like them to be.

You know you need a way to keep your business, employees, projects and tasks better organized. And you know you need a way to more effectively communicate with others in your office. That's the only way you'll be certain that everyone understands their roles so that the projects you've worked so hard to win actually get completed correctly and on time.

You've not even set up a centralized location for storing all your employee and company related documentation: employee manuals, slide show presentations, forecasts, and other reports. You've not yet given the employees you hired an employee manual and you know it's only a matter of time until this seemingly innocent oversight backfires.

And last quarter, your sales manager left for the industry's annual trade show and conference and forgot the presentation that was especially created for the exhibitor booth. You had to overnight it and that was not cheap!

You know there are products available to help you but you don't have time to research them. You've heard that some require expensive hardware and that's one thing you've not budgeted for this year. And even if you did, you know neither you nor anyone else in the office has time to learn and then teach others about whatever new software you do purchase.

What your business could use is one central place to store all of its vital information. Information such as contacts with whom you and your employees do business and all open projects including the ability to track due dates, keep notes, assign/reassign tasks to other staff members and the ability to notify others when and who has made critical changes. Internal memos are not doing the job; they just get buried on desks and besides, they're an outdated method of communication and not a very secure way of communicating, either. Your team relies on their pagers and cell phones for communication. It is, after all, 2005.

To further complicate matters, you don't want all of your employees in all of your loops. But you just don't know of an effective way to differentiate between who should get what information, where it should be sent, when or even why! It's no wonder you've avoided this issue for so long.

Good News! There is a product that can help with the seemingly insurmountable task of better scheduling and collaboration among those who help you run your business. It's called 4Team Online. Use it to create secure web sites, then use the web sites to share company information, coordinate calendars and collaborate your business documents and your employees' schedules. Now, no matter where you or your employees are in the world, the data they need is always just a web site away.

Regardless of the size of your business, 4Team Online can help. If your business uses Microsoft Office products (versions 2000, 2002 or 2003), 4Team Online will help you increase the efficiency and productivity of your workgroups.

4Team Online is actually a service that you pay for monthly which eliminates the need to purchase and maintain expensive hardware or software. There's an easy to use on-line help feature, plus a full year of FREE technical support.

Copyright � 2004 Cavyl Stewart. Get the most out of the software you use everyday. Check out the add-in software directory for more information on 4Team Online and other great time saving Outlook add-in tools. Visit: http://www.find-small-business-software.com/addins_ms_outlook.php - Also, be sure to check out my Exclusive, 100% free, 100% original content ecourses.