Many companies employ workers across the globe. These workers – separated in some cases by thousands of miles – must at times collaborate to create mission statements, marketing plans, and other important work documents.
This can lead to headaches. What often happens, as writer Dawn Foster with the Web site Gigaom points out, is that collaborators send their documents to each other through e-mail messages. Eventually, this leaves companies with several versions of their documents, many of them conflicting with each other as workers make changes simultaneously but without consulting with each other.
This can lead to confusion.
Fortunately, there are steps businesses can take to simplify the document-collaboration process. Foster, in fact, points to a pair of key tools that can help make collaborating on documents a drama-free task.
The power of the Wiki
Foster writes that Wikis are great tools for companies that boast large teams that are all working together on documents. With Wikis, any member of a team can edit documents whenever they want. Their changes are then saved to a master document that is stored in the cloud, where other team members can also access it and edit as they see fit.
Companies can also use Wikis to share their documents with a large audience. Again, companies can determine exactly who gains access to their Wikis, making it easy for all team members to collaborate and share ideas with one another.
Google Docs still a top choice
Foster is also a fan of Google Docs… and with good reason. This popular free program works especially well for companies that want to share a limited number of documents with a smaller team. Google Docs also happens to be one of the best ways for team members to collaborate on spreadsheets, presentations, and other documents.
Again, after team members make changes to a document, they simply have to “share” or save it to make the changes or suggestions available to all other team members.
No more headaches
Both Google Docs and a Wiki can significantly reduce the headaches associated with collaborating on documents. And in doing so, they can make everyone’s work days a little less stressful.