As companies expand, it becomes necessary to quickly and easily connect numerous departments, offices, teams and employees. More and more companies are turning to team collaboration solutions that allow team members to better communicate, share files and collaborate together.

Here’s a quick list of things you should consider when choosing your team collaboration software –

1. Is your solution scalable?

As your company grows, your solution should be able to grow with you. Let’s say you decided to choose an on premises solution, and you went through the trouble of installing forty hardware solutions on forty of your employees’ computers. What are you going to do when your company inevitably expands? And how will you provide the IT staffing needed to install, maintain and upgrade all those machines?

A great alternative is to opt for a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution, that requires no hardware, no upgrade fees, and no hardware maintenance. SaaS solutions are online solutions that are set up and maintained by the provider, so all your company needs to do is purchase a subscription and pay as you use.

2. How much can you afford to invest in your team collaboration solution?

The ROI is crucial in convincing your executive board that your solution is worth the investment. Large enterprise corporations often use Microsoft Sharepoint, but find that the expensive hardware, installation, maintenance and training programs pile up and become burdensome. For midmarket companies, it’s a smarter idea to go with a midmarket solution that offers the same powerful features of Sharepoint, but at a more affordable price, and one that is more scalable to midsize organizations. For midsize companies, there just isn’t enough IT staffing to go around, and a team collaboration solution would have to be intuitive, user friendly enough that any company member could adopt it on his or her own.

3. Is your solution secure?

There’s an abundance of free collaboration applications on the web today. While this alternative might work for professional service workers that only need to manage projects and files for themselves and maybe one or two other people, companies that have teams of 10 or more need a more robust collaboration solution, and one that they can trust. One of the most important things to consider is the security of your corporate data, and to make sure its only being seen by your internal members. If you aren’t paying for security, don’t expect there to be any. Look for a solution that offers security layers and at least 90 days of data backup.

4. Does your solution offer enough funtionality?

Although there will never be a 100% perfect collaboration solution, there are plenty of solutions that overshadow others in features and functionality. There are lightweight applications that match the needs of smaller businesses with simpler project management needs. There are also heavier duty collaboration solutions that offer state of the art team communication, document sharing, project management and collaboration tools, including web meetings, audio conferencing, project reporting, time tracking and intranets.

Author Bio: Grace Kang is a marketing copywriter for Central Desktop, a SaaS based Team Collaboration Software solution for businesses. Central Desktop provides a powerful, robust Sharepoint Alternative for managing projects, teams and documents.

Category: Computers and Technology
Keywords: team collaboration, team collaboration software, alternative to sharepoint, sharepoint alternative