The rise of globalization has transformed traditional office environments in ways we could have never imagined. Organizations that once found success in working on-premises, holding face-to-face meetings to discuss deliverables, and delegate tasks come across a new challenge. They must ensure that geographically dispersed departments can connect and work together to meet common goals effortlessly. This represents a dynamic shift that calls for team collaboration software to facilitate online communications, collaboration, document sharing, and project management. These solutions are no longer luxuries; rather, they have become necessities.
This brings us to online collaboration tools that have been around for many years and are now an integral feature of today’s workplace. Companies are interested in the possibilities associated with cost-effective technologies that enable them to manage remote and hybrid teams. These work models represent the new norm in a post-COVID-19 world, meaning employees should be able to perform their job duties anytime, anywhere, and from any internet-supported device.
Whether you run a startup, SMB, or enterprise, adapting to the new-age business field is crucial if you expect to stay relevant and competitive. You must focus on digital transformation, and there are several tools to help you achieve this.
In this post, we will talk about how online tools improve team performance and help you deliver positive outcomes.
Time & Location Independence
Two clear benefits of investing in online collaboration apps are effective teamwork and productivity. Employees get the necessary tools to connect with their co-workers and managers remotely, at a client location, or from home. Allow teams to gain real-time access to a content management system and locate data quickly. Brainstorming sessions, conceptualizing ideas, sharing content, files, data, and other materials with anyone from anywhere, anytime becomes a reality. This also offers flexibility, you can keep team members in a closed-loop for precision feedback, encourage them to maximize productivity, and keep work moving at a quick pace.
This has proven results for companies, as shown in a study by Deloitte. In this, three-quarters of respondents are of the view that access to collaboration platforms enhances productivity up to 20-25%. So, we can see that 24/7 connectivity and responsiveness irrespective of time and region instills accountability and ensures that everyone meets deadlines.
Eliminate Email Culture
Did you know that employees typically spend around three hours a day looking for information and/or writing emails? They also put in over five hours per week checking their emails. Do the math, and you can see how much these numbers add up to. The result is employees wasting their effort on redundant tasks when they should be prioritizing high-value activities that bring revenue to the company. This can also lead to a tendency of slacking off, a habit that can have severe consequences down the line.
Furthermore, it is difficult to keep up with long email threads and find the right files/documents in urgent scenarios, and doing so can decrease efficiency. Luckily, online collaboration apps improve team performance and output when you capitalize on them properly. With all communications in a reliable, secure platform, departments can easily find the exact information they need to do their job. Everything ranging from files and data to other intellectual property resides safely in a centralized knowledge hub. This greatly decreases the time employees would otherwise spend on making back and forth phone calls and going through long email exchanges. As research shows, the best online collaboration tools can minimize email volume by approximately 30%.
Greater Visibility & Transparency
Businesses often have reservations about letting employees work remotely or on the go. Today, many professionals work and interact with customers, partners, and co-workers outside the office, making it difficult for the management to keep a check on what’s happening. This can confuse departments like the C-suite and HR when they conduct performance appraisals or compile progress reports. After all, they want to be sure that every employee is pulling their weight even if they’re not working in the same space.
Collaboration software addresses these concerns by digitizing processes and modernizing applications for enterprise deployments. For instance, you can supervise the overall status of a project and ensure that it’s fully up-to-date. From the start, you can review what needs to be done, tasks that are underway, and initiate conversations on apps like Convo about workflows. Doing so eliminates micro-management, hence lightening the burden for project supervisors. Everyone can maintain an open line of communication and ensure that things remain on track so they reduce the margin of human error or costly mistakes. This is where Convo’s centralized knowledge base comes in, as everyone can refer to a single source of truth.
Security
Trusted online collaboration software and tools leverage advanced security protocols to safeguard user data. They use end-to-end encryption, firewalls, two-factor authentication, single sign-on, and password protection to reduce security vulnerabilities and data breach attempts by intruders or unauthorized third parties. Most online collaboration apps function on cloud-based workspaces, so they guarantee information security at every layer.
High-risk industries such as the public sector can ask vendors to provide evidence about their security credentials and check if they are up-to-date. You can even ask online collaboration tool providers to host your data if you’d like, and many would say that this is a better option than storing intellectual property on personal servers.
Problem-Solving & Decision-Making
To guarantee smooth business operations, collaboration solutions help IT quickly troubleshoot problems that prevent employees from moving forward with their work. Teams can immediately inform each other if the company is pushing important updates or developments that may result in bottlenecks or downtime. Simultaneously, other users can offer assistance by finding a way around these roadblocks. One way of doing this is to utilize a collaboration app that incorporates audio/video conferencing. With this, teams can share their screens to explain the situation in detail and proactively resolve issues no matter where they are.
Moreover, these tools break down silos when teams have all-around communications. This reduces delays in business operations so that employees can focus on delivering tangible results. You can even simplify problem-solving, especially for remote employees by enabling them to meet virtually and make the right decisions with accuracy.
Effective Teamwork And High Productivity
Imagine that you run a company with offices in New York, London, and Sydney. Next, think about the costs of traveling to and fro or making international phone calls just to ensure that all your workflows are aligned. A flexible and convenient arrangement would be to invest in online collaboration apps. This improves communication between stakeholders such as HR, sales, marketing, IT, manufacturing, and procurement creates an agile organization that accelerates time to market.
Here are some examples of how online collaboration software can help you manage all this. HR can share SOPs, policies, performance reviews, promotion announcements, and manage payroll. Coordinate with external stakeholders like logistics and procurement and emphasize timeliness by using team productivity software to request inventory replenishment, refunds, exchanges, etc.
The customer support department also benefits when they have reliable collaboration software to work with. Employees can communicate their availability before the management assigns their shifts. This enables you to focus on delivering great customer service and cater to clients without sacrificing quality. Managers can use collaboration tools to encourage innovation by tapping into the best talent and moving quickly from ideation to implementation.
Final Remarks
As an all-in-one solution, Convo is a collaboration tool that works for modern teams in startups, SMBs, and enterprises. Engage desk and non-desk teams on the web-based or mobile (Android, iOS) app, improve efficiency, productivity, and guarantee high ROI in the long run. This leads to productive teamwork, and you don’t have to worry about losing communications, files/documents, and progress updates. This is because they’re centralized and archived, allowing you to retrieve them whenever you want. These tools pave the way to a wide network of learning and expertise so that teams always perform well.
Are you using an online collaboration platform to prepare your business for the future of work? We’d love to hear from you, so feel free to let us know in your comments!
Today, team communication and collaboration software are on the rise. Companies are looking to manage their to-dos, share files, exchange messages, and host video conferences, not to mention get more done in less time. If you explore the market, there are many workflow management tools that automate business processes and streamline tasks from A-Z. What about team chat apps that have been around for years? Although they are not the latest innovation, most come with complex pricing plans or have not been upgraded with sophisticated features.
This is where Convo stays ahead of the game, as we shall see next.
The Solution
Convo recently introduced the much-anticipated Voice Notes to its existing portfolio of group posts, channels, direct messaging, and file sharing. It has already been rolled out in our release, and we want you to experience what it’s like to send personalized voice notes instead of long, time-consuming text messages. This is especially the case when typing or texting is not possible in specific situations, and you need a go-to option with less hassle.
Voice messages represent an easy and stress-free way for teams to collaborate remotely, in the office, or from home on shared projects. Whether the purpose is to communicate ideas, explain something, learn, check on progress, provide feedback, or give context to a conversation, Convo audio recordings help say it all. This feature not only streamlines your communication and collaboration process but also saves time that you can invest in other business areas.
Our latest feature updates promise the following benefits:
Seamless Communication with Voice Notes
When you and your teams are not interacting in person, your focus would be on emphasizing your point and communicating it as clearly as possible. With multiple responsibilities to handle, why would you risk misunderstandings or missed deadlines because of someone not receiving a message, or an app failing to deliver it? The consequences can be severe, ranging from poor work relationships to a lack of business growth, sales, and revenue.
Convo primarily introduced Voice Notes to address these pain points. It is one of the few collaboration tools that offer this feature on scale globally. With Voice Notes, you can share ideas, express your opinions, and give feedback. During the entire process, not even a single word gets lost in translation, meaning your recipients understand your audio messages from beginning to end. Why should this matter to you?
Imagine yourself as a busy executive in a meeting, and one of your associates contacts you asking for an urgent update on a customer case. To ensure 100% responsiveness, you excuse yourself, step outside to send a quick Voice Note on your Convo app explaining everything, and get back on track almost instantly. This makes it easier for your associate to act on your response, and it bridges potential communication gaps.
Keep Track Of Everything
Although face-to-face communication is great, it poses a risk that nobody running a business wants. When you say something, it is easy for the other party to deny the exact words you communicated or interpret it wrongly. Sending a long text message can also cause a recipient to lose interest, skim through crucial points, or fail to follow up on projects. What if you do not have a pen and paper, or you are too busy to jot down to-dos, let alone scribble hastily on a notepad? Simply speak into the mic on the Convo app and hit the ‘Send button’, and monitor conversations without letting anything slip by. This helps keep teams alert, increasing their efficiency and productivity.
You can also share current and future tasks, plan sprints and ask if your teams require clarification on anything. This brings people together, streamlines your workflows, and improves employee engagement. Most importantly, Voice Notes make everyone accountable for their tasks. As teams must update you about their progress or any potential roadblocks they are facing, they build a sense of responsibility towards their work and become more proactive.
Make Yourself Heard Everywhere
It’s not possible to be physically present every time at the office. Moreover, with remote work/WFH as the new normal, we should implement solutions that help us adapt to the current circumstances. Keeping this in mind, it is unpleasant to have business conversations scattered across several apps or devices. This can cause teams to misinterpret qualitative and quantitative information or miss a message entirely.
Voice Notes enable you to be heard no matter where you work from. This feature update is a convenient way for you to get in touch with your co-workers or employees. At the same time, you can shape your tone and communicate context in depth which adds the human element to business. Think of it as an all-in-one tool that allows everyone to stay connected, in sync, and on top of things. Whether they work from their desk, on the go, or from the comfort of their homes, Convo Voice Notes provide complete coverage and transparency.
Streamlined business processes are vital to an organization’s overall efficiency. For organizations to become and remain successful, it’s time for them to change the way they work and embrace collaborative tools to move ahead into the digital era. Remote working in response to the pandemic has enabled organizations to embrace the flexible and hybrid way forward with the increase in workflow automation and more.
PTCL experiences seamless collaboration with Convo
PTCL, Pakistan’s largest telecom provider, has been on a mission to transform the digital landscape of Pakistan. In order to continue playing its part in the development of the country’s telecommunication facility, PTCL must stay innovative. For the longest time, PTCL’s employees relied on emails and multiple collaboration tools for their day-to-day correspondence, until last year, they seamlessly shifted to Convo.
With Convo, PTCL was able to integratemultiple apps in one place through the Integration feature for a smooth and rich collaboration experience while eliminating the time that was being consumed juggling between dozens of apps.
The management at PTCL believes that Convo complements the organization’s objective of transforming the digital landscape of Pakistan with its collaborative features. and workflow automation.
Here’s what Amjad Iqbal, Group EVP of PTCL, has to say about Convo:
Convo makes sharing large files possible at Unicorn Black
Unicorn Black, the multi-award-winning transmedia production company, works by exchanging large-size videos with its team regularly. The greatest challenge accompanied by work-from-home was finding a communication tool that allowed sharing large-sized documents along with the ease to share progress and feedback. With Convo, the transition towards remote working became seamless.
Convo allows you to share over 60 formats of files ranging from web links to videos to presentations, making it a complete collaboration platform. This is further proven when the employees at Unicorn Black find it easier to share and update their work progress with others while easily tweaking their work according to the feedback received through Laser Focused visual feature. This helps Unicorn Black to automate their workflows working remotely or from the office.
Here is Adeel Abid, COO of Unicorn Black, sharing his experience with Convo:
Convo Simplifies Team Collaboration at Multinet
Multinet, the premier information, and communications solution providers offer a wide range of infostructure services to companies in Pakistan. The solutions are customized as per the customer’s requirements which required switch between multiple platforms for internal and external communication, making it very complex. With Convo’s Group chats and One-to-One chat, communication became organized and structured and enabled the teams to work better together.
The organization gives great importance to team collaboration and Convo serves as a platform to communicate effectively by integrating multiples apps in one to achieve organizational milestones.
Here is the COO of Multinet, Adnan Zaidi, sharing his experience with Convo:
Remote working made easy with Convo
Techlets is a data science company that delivers cutting-edge AI-driven solutions. Being an influencer network, it provides services across the region and must coordinate with multiple teams. Having all the relative parties under one roof with user friendly features was their basic need. Convo, not just provided a consolidated platform for all their chats, groups, files, and assets, but also provided a companywide activity stream using the Newsfeed.
The organization and its employees believe that working remotely has never been this easy.
Here’s a testimonial by Ahsan Tahir, COO of Techlets:
Now, it’s time to stop your search for the right collaboration tool and get on board with Convo to automate and streamline your work collaborations.
Convo has transformed how organizations originally perceived collaboration tools & workflow automation. With its 360-view approach towards team collaboration, it has been able to address most remote workplace environment fallbacks. With its unique architecture, Convo has scaled very quickly and still coming out with new features which will push the tool as one of the most workplace-ready among the bunch.
Convo is proud to announce the addition of Jacked Nutrition to its clientele and transform its internal business communication into Digital Collaboration. Jacked Nutrition has implemented Convo to manage and collaborate with its workforce across 7 outlets in Pakistan to impart a complete lifestyle that caters to all health and fitness needs.
How does CONVO help Jacked Nutrition?
Convo provides Jacked Nutrition the opportunity to experience a rich business collaboration tool for its retail teams. Since retail environments are critical and require effective, two-way communication, using Convo enables the company to accelerate its decision-making and streamline its communication through a single platform across all its outlets in Pakistan, further enhancing the customer experience.
Build a Collaborative Workforce
This in turn has improved Jacked Nutrition’s internal communication and has allowed the company to manage its daily activities, simplify horizontal and vertical communication, and optimize inventory management in terms of nutrients and cooked meals.
Convo, with the approach of improving the overall collaboration experience at Jacked Nutrition, makes it possible for HR to manage the workflow of employees on leave.
Collaborative-based HRM Practices
With a single platform for collaboration, it is now easier for HR to share policies, rules, and documents with the new joiners and enhance the onboarding process. Not just that, Jacked Nutrition is also able to share important information and notices with its retail team across outlets in one go by using the acknowledgment feature on posts.
While other companies are being forced to rearrange desk arrangements and adhere to social distancing protocols, Jacked Nutrition can manage its dispersed workforce through contactless attendance with Convo Locate and guarantee solid workforce management while ensuring safety.
Convo believes improving customer experience is a multi-faceted approach, which if practiced can attract and retain customers. Through a single platform for communication, Jacked Nutrition capitalizes on the opportunity to keep its trainers, priority customers, and management connected through Convo, making it an ideal tool for workforce collaboration.
Envisioning the Future with Digital Collaboration
We belong to a world that is constantly changing, much of which is driven by digital technology. Businesses need to embrace all that change offers, to help their workforce keep pace and maintain their competitive edge. No matter how technology continues to evolve, embracing technology is always a key to moving forward, especially when you have Convo which makes the transition easier and convenient. Intending to digitalize the workplace, Jacked Nutrition has embarked on an endeavor to utilize Convo as its way forward.
If you run a small business, then you may be missing out on one of the best collaboration tools on the market that can drastically increase your sales.
CONVO is a platform for work conversation that helps teams come together, work faster, and offer great results. Running a small business is not an easy task, from day-to-day meetings with clients, follow-up calls, proposals, and strategies, it hardly leaves time for employees to focus on other tasks. With all the smart collaborative features offered by CONVO, tasks not only become manageable but also boost your sales team’s productivity. Research carried out by the Institute for Corporate Productivity has found that businesses that invest in collaboration tools are five times more likely to have higher sales team performance.
By now you must be aware that CONVO makes it easier for businesses to connect with employees, manage daily tasks, and run operations smoothly. Now, the question is how can it help your small business increase its sales?
- Increase consumer loyalty by offering consistency
The majority of the consumers expect consistency in brand experience across different channels and touchpoints. For instance, if you run a small clothing business, the consumer would expect a consistent brand tone no matter which platform they use to reach out to you. Your sales team’s goal should be to meet the consumer’s expectations and offer them a satisfying experience across all the channels. CONVO allows you to do that by inviting employees to connect through one platform that integrates all the applications needed to share and collaborate information with a faster response time and easier navigation interface.
- Improve response time by centralizing all your agents
According to a research study conducted by Harvard Business Review, sales agents who reach leads within an hour are likely to generate 7 times more sales. This proves that when it comes to increasing your sales, speed plays a big part. By centralizing all your agents with a collaboration tool like CONVO, your sales team can maintain a fast-paced workflow and reach customers easily and quickly. With CONVO’s features, you can bring your team together and organize all your conversations to keep your sales team on one page, such as:
• File Sharing
• Threads and Discussions
• Chats: individual and Group
• Groups
• Polls; Text and Image-based
• Audio and Video Calling
• Secure Sharing
• Integrations
• Deep Search
- Track your sales team’s progress
To increase your sales, you must effectively manage your sales teams, and to do so it is important to analyze your team’s performance. For a small business, doing this can be difficult as there are so many other things to look after. But with the following CONVO features, you no longer have to micromanage everything:
CONVO Newsfeed
Get a wide activity stream of your company, that lets you view everything happening on CONVO, from daily updates to emails, you are a part of everything. The newsfeed updates in real-time and prioritizes your posts based on recent activity.
CONVO Analytics
Convo collects your organization’s key metrics and helps monitor team performance, activity & throughput. This helps you to make informed decisions and reach goals based on the insights.
CONVO Locate
On consent from the team members, keep track of your on-site or remote workforce with CONVO’s Locate feature that tracks an employee’s live location through a live geo-location. This helps in managing daily tasks efficiently, especially for workers who are order bookers or perform outdoor sales.
CONVO is the ideal tool that can help you close your sales deal, have a well-collaborated sales team, and increase overall efficiency. So what are you waiting for? Sign up today and watch the benefits reflect on the bottom line every day!
More and more enterprises now prefer working remotely using various virtual collaboration platforms for a faster and more secure workflow. However, the collaborative tools available may or may not be secure and data could be vulnerable enough to be hacked and misused for malicious purposes creating digital security loopholes. Hackers could surpass multiple systems to gain access to confidential information and create anarchy, particularly for enterprises that use well-known apps which exist in the market.
Are you prepared for today’s security compliance?
Using different apps for messaging and collaboration purposes at work do not instill security compliance. Many readily available options in app stores for work communication and document collaboration include terms and conditions that are under scrutiny for clarity of data privacy. Data in transit or at rest is at risk of data theft, additionally, data that can be erased after some time, or shared on platforms that have a single control enterprise poses threats to the consent of users and their information. Sharing sensitive information can allow hackers to fish data when it is most vulnerable.
But, with CONVO, integration of multiple apps ensures data security and has the added benefit of using one interface for all collaboration purposes, so your communication runs smooth and does not get lost in the clutter. Keeping security at the heart of the system with its at-rest data encryption, CONVO guarantees maximum protection of data that is shared, collaborated, and communicated digitally.
With so many available options for virtual collaboration, how can you determine which one provides the greatest advantage?
CONVO offers numerous features to enable collaboration, support project workflows, and facilitate communication throughout the organization whilst using CONVO’s ‘bank-grade’ data security model. Normally, data exchange between a sender and receiver passes through: the sender’s device, the cloud, and the receiver’s device.
With the industry’s best technology and practices, CONVO ensures that your data is always end-to-end encrypted even whilst the sending and receiving devices are at rest. So, in case of a device being stolen, hacked or damaged, or a server being accessed illegitimately, your data will always be protected and the perpetrators’ attempts will be wasted effort.
Are office networks safer than virtual networks?
Workplace private networks and their security was always a concern, but, after remote work became commonplace, there was a spike in virtual private networks too. However, CONVO takes away the burden and cost of securing and configuring multiple networks for remote work by offering a collaboration space that facilitates real-time shared access to files within one interface that allows you to collaborate and converse with clients and internal employees safely.
Amplify Digital Security with CONVO
It is highly likely that corporations may still continue remote work in the future. However, with CONVO, you can rest assure that there will be no compromise on digital security when collaborating virtually from home or office. So start collaborating, communicating and sharing with bank-grade data security because you are always digitally secure with CONVO!
There’s one challenge that seems to plague teams and companies all over the world. Whether they’re big or small, remote or co-located; they all require everyone working in the company to stay on the same page. This might seem easy enough to do but even the best team collaboration tools can fail if the right fit between the tool and organization isn’t found.
Project milestones, deadlines, updates, annotations, feedback, questions, invoices… it’s all-important, yet can all easily get lost in the shuffle and result in major setbacks for any team. This is why it’s so important to find the perfect tool for your company. Fortunately, this is one more area were technology adaption and advancements can swoop in and help us improve the way we work significantly.
There are multiple types of tools and apps available that help out companies in different ways and perform different functions. From streamlining workflows, improving communication, and keeping companies organized, each tool is important in its own rite. What’s necessary is to find the right tool to implement that’ll make your team work smarter (instead of harder!).
The things to consider when deciding on a tool is how well it performs each of these functions:
- Communication Tool
This might seem obvious but effective communication is essential for teams to drive results. Each organization needs a communication tool in place to help them perform to their highest potential.
- Seamless and Quick Communication
Communication needs to be seamless and quick for maximum effectiveness and as such communication tools should be able to perform all sorts of functions from personal and group chats and instant messaging, video and audio calls, conference calls, providing quotes and feedback, secure communications channels and sharing of all file formats like audio, documents, video, image etc. Finding the best communication tool helps organizations perform their best and keeps all employees connected among themselves and their employers.
- Project Management Tool
Every company has different teams working on various projects at the same time. Sometimes the same employee is working on multiple projects or a manager is looking after multiple projects simultaneously. It can be hard to keep up with all the deliverables, deadlines and updates on every single project. Which is why an effective project management tool is needed.
- Choose the Right Project Management Tool
The right project management tool for your company can make all the difference when it comes to implementing projects successfully. Project management tools should offer organized and structured team communication, help with faster decision making through polls and other tools, provide remote collaboration, help gather data and insights and manage teams.
- Organization Tool
To help drive results and maintain efficiency, it’s important for companies to stay organized. Tools can be very beneficial in this regard.
- Functions of Organizational Tools
Different tools can be utilized to do things like organize your notes, to-do lists, planners and journals. Having these handy can help employees and organizations with effective work performance and achieving deadlines, and avoid mistakes like missed deliverables.
- Benefits of the Right Tool
When teams are connected and on the same page about their tasks, aware of what’s happening in each facet of the organization and working towards a common shared goal, it can have a huge impact on things like productivity, engagement and efficiency. Which is why finding the right tool for your organization is so important and if one tool can do the work of several different ones, it increases the likelihood of effective team collaboration even more. Convo is the right tool for your company to meet deadlines, stay connected with your team and stay organized. Convo provides the necessary tools organizations to be on the same page, all in one app!
2020 has been a year of overcoming challenges, learning and growth altering the way we work forever. Organizations all over the world have had to adapt and change the way they operate. As remote work has become the necessity of the hour due to the effects of the COVID 19 pandemic, Convo’s new upgraded customers have taken the situation in stride and managed their teams and run their operations in a new and effective way – some with highly successful results that have benefited their ability to adjust to fluid changes in the economy. We’ve considered the learning process our customers have gone through, in particular how team collaboration tools have played a fundamental part in their adjustment to working remotely.
We don’t see an end to this new trend that has emerged in the coming year. In fact, there are still 70%+ organizations and people still willing or making up their mind to adapt to this change.
Intra – company communication
As more and more workers are working remotely, the need for all employees and teams to collaborate effectively is increasing. In the past, intranet was an essential part of all organizations. It provided a secure connection exclusive to the organization and helped with sharing information, offered collaboration tools, and other computing services. Now that employees are working remotely, it’s not possible for them to connect to an organization’s intranet. Organizations need a platform to stay connected and updated with what each part of their organization is doing. Convo provides a platform for work conversation that helps people collaborate and communicate to have quick, seamless and focused conversations. It can be thought of as the new intranet, providing employees and organizations all over the world a secure connection and a platform to share files, send messages, have video and voice calls, and everything else needed to stay connected.
Workspaces – Workplaces are now a thing of the “past”
A workplace is a designated location your employees have to show up 5 days a week to work. Whereas, a workspace can be anywhere. Whether it’s a desk, cubicle, your local coffee shop or your home office. Remote work has now increased the need for a “workspace” instead of a “workplace”.
Your workspace doesn’t just include your computer or laptop but all of the specialized softwares, communication tools and other digital devices you need to use every day. Organizations have now recognized the need for workspaces and realized that a regular video call and haphazard texts here and there just don’t cut it. A specialized platform is needed for all conversations to happen and for effective team collaboration. Team collaboration is important for organizations to succeed and compete in this new era of virtual work. Convo helps organizations to receive timely updates on all employees helping teams have better collaboration and communication to thrive in workspaces wherever they are.
Team Wellness
As remote work can make employees and employers feel detached from and among each other, it’s important to bring about a sense of connectedness and keep relations high. Teams that have bonded with each other work better, more effectively and are more productive in the long run. The way to do this is to encourage teams to develop personal connections and collaborate seamlessly for effortless connectivity. This will keep team spirits high, motivation levels skyrocketing and productivity soaring. One way to ensure team wellness is to promote employee participation and real-time connectivity. Convo provides a platform to do just that. Employees need to only log on to the app and they’re immediately connected with the entire organization and employers can easily monitor their employees’ contribution on the app.
Remote Employees
It’s not just organizations who’re going remote but individuals too. Recently, there has been a rise in freelance workers who work remotely for any number of organizations. Companies now are accepting this changing landscape of remote work and are open to hire more and more freelance employees. This has increased the need for solutions towards keeping workers whether freelance or otherwise connected with each other to ensure consistent and smooth collaboration of teams. Having access to a platform specially designed to keep workspaces linked up makes managing remote teams trouble-free.
More and more companies around the globe have asked their employees to work from home instead of coming to the office, making remote working a new reality that people are getting used to. However, being at home and following an office like schedule can be challenging for many. But thanks to technology, the right and smart use of it has made working from home simpler.
Make your work from home transition less dramatic and the shift to virtual workplaces relatively seamless with Convo.
Better Team Collaboration
Earlier brainstorming required face to face meetings. However, with Convo, you can encourage open communication through video and audio calls. It is believed that calls are a good way to have a detailed discussion, share a quick update with your team, have more eyes on a problem, or brainstorm ideas. Being able to see each other when talking can often help in collaboration.
Not to forget that it also helps in keeping the team intact that might otherwise go neglected when working from home. So now with an always-available video and audio calling feature, no team member is more than a Convo call away.
Group Chats for Easy Group Discussions
Emails can be effective for official decisions, but it can clog up inboxes. So whether you are new to working remotely or a pro, it takes efforts to maintain the connection of team members, especially when the team is afar. Convo group chat brings the team members together for meaningful virtual interactions and strengthens the feeling of togetherness while they work from home.
Convo messenger is packed with innovative features that provide an experience of rich communication. Be it group or instant chats, time and distance no longer play a role. This reaps benefits, such as the employees being engaged, productive, and happy when surrounded by meaningful workplace relationships.
Your Choice of Communication
Communication is among the top issues that individuals encounter when working from home. As the teams are distributed across cities, Convo helps in communicating effectively through Synchronous and Asynchronous communication. However, a strategic balance between the two is useful for achieving maximum efficiency.
Synchronous
Communication that happens in real-time and requires an immediate response. Synchronous communication is usually beneficial when a project requires quick delivery or the team members are new and need to build rapport. This initial engagement should be used to establish a working foundation, such that future touchpoints can be primarily asynchronous.
Asynchronous
One remote work best practice is asynchronous communication. This concept simply means that work doesn’t happen at the same time for everyone because the employees are dispersed, and they can respond whenever they want. Asynchronous communication is an asset when working remotely, especially when team members are in multiple time zones.
This makes sure that no one is excluded from important discussions, just because they work from home. Giving team members the ability to move projects forward on a schedule that suits them. This type of autonomy leads to extraordinary loyalty, retention, and quality of work, keeping productivity at par even when working from home.
Working Together Is Possible
Start calls instantly, stay on top of your calendar, encourage social connections, and more, all from within Convo. So whether you are working from home or you are all set to make your way back to the office, working together should be possible anytime, anywhere.
Your secret to revolutionizing your transition to work from home starts with Convo!
Most of our day to day things like working, shopping and learning are now being done virtually. Therefore, the rules for a business to succeed have changed, and are ever more reliant on harnessing the power of digital models to create new experiences with a collaborative leadership. However, digital transformation is not a new need for businesses across the globe, instead sustainability through digital transformation is the new trend.
To explore and discuss what’s new in the wake of sustainable digital transformation and the rise of collaborative leadership, Convo proudly hosted the monthly CXO Global Forum Meetup at their Islamabad Office on 27th October, 2020.
The meetup started with the host inviting Noshad Minhas, Chief Product Officer-Convo to inform the attendees about Convo and share what it does. He began by thanking the panelist, Abdul Rahim Ahmad, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) & Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)-SECP, Osman Nasir, Chairman-Pakistan Software Export Board, Fatima Mazhar, General Manager-Keep Truckin and Dr. Sahibzada Ali Mahmud, Managing Director-Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Technology Board for being a part of the meetup. He informs that “the slogan for Convo is Unify your workforce and collectively we should be unifying our workforces for a common goal which should be Digital Pakistan”.
The host continues “many people talk about when will the moment for Pakistan happen. The moment for transformative leadership, digital disruption and also the moment for collaborative leadership”. He added “we are almost there, but that does not mean that we are there yet”
He invites Osman Rashid, CEO & Chairman-Convo for his key note on what is it that the modern leader of today should be looking at. Osman Rashid began by focusing on his journey of two years and how he has been lucky enough to work with some of the best people. He also adds that the people of Pakistan have a lot of potential and what people at managerial positions should do to push forward, because our moment is almost there, but is taking a while.
Further, he continues “companies are built by teams underneath and not just the founder alone. However, it’s just that we do not aim high which is not okay. Because the spark that comes from some of the team members is the magic for the company to do great”.
By sharing examples of some of the successful entrepreneurs, likewise some of the individuals at Convo succeeded by taking a step forward, resulting in the recognition of Convo worldwide. Also, adding that Convo has opened up schools in Lahore with an idea to introduce concept based learning with the notion that if the generation does not step forward, we as a nation cannot move forward.
He encouraged the executives present at the meetup to find brilliant people and cultivate them to take the business to the next level.
The session went ahead with a panel talk on “Sustainable digital transformation and the rise of collaborative leadership” with panelist sharing their experiences of working as C-suite executives and the challenges they foresee. The host invited the four panelists; Abdul Rahim Ahmad, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) & Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)-SECP, Osman Nasir, Chairman-Pakistan Software Export Board, Fatima Mazhar, General Manager-Keep Truckin and Dr. Sahibzada Ali Mahmud, Managing Director-Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Technology Board to share their stories and perspectives.
The host began by appreciating the initiatives of Mr. Abdul Rahim Ahmad- SECP for the online registration of new corporations within a day, most of which were IT companies from Islamabad. The host asked “how does he ensure whether the companies that are coming into Pakistan for registration processes, filing, returns, etc., through the digital platform is a sustainable transformation?”
Mr. Abdul Rahim Ahmad responded “The number of companies getting registered in Pakistan is increasing due to firstly, the boom of entrepreneurship and secondly, even today, billions of companies are undocumented.”
He also mentioned that the idea behind digital registration was to simplify the process for companies starting up in Pakistan. On being asked whether the collaborative trait was easy to implement in a government organization, he responded “The idea was to talk about collaborative leadership, not only within the organization across horizontally and vertically but by engaging citizen and public as well. As a result, we saw engagement not only with the NIC but also with different sectors/industries.”
Next Mr. Osman Nasir, Chairman-Pakistan Software Export Board, commented “If we try and train most of our human resource into emerging tech, the value we will build for the rest of the world as an HR or a company will be immense. Nobody will be able to rule us out.” To which the host added that with the right people at the right job, things do happen.
With KPT being a huge challenge in terms of culture, language, academia and industry collaborations but huge opportunities, the host moved to speak to its Managing Director, Dr. Sahibzada Ali Mahmud. He began by asking “What are the few things you see that you want to work on, despite the challenges?”
“Regarding digital transformation, the two main areas I would like to focus on are digital governance and digital economy.” responded Dr. Ali Mahmud.
He also added “The biggest challenge of driving digital transformation is the change management and the changing mindset. With the right kind of interventions, we will drive digital transformation across the organization.”
Lastly, Fatima Mazhar, GM-Keep Truckin shared her perspective being the only panelist from the private sector and the one to launch Careem Pakistan. On being asked that what is the core element to digital transformation, she responded “There are four things which are very important for digital transformation to be sustainable; your customers, your own employees, your country and most importantly, somebody who thinks the core of digital transformation lies in processes.”
The Forum meetup ended with how Convo is seizing the opportunity to advance a new path for sustainable digital transformation by developing the capability of resources and their technical understanding to succeed in the digital world.
For the complete session be sure to view the recording of the meetup available on our Facebook page and let us know whether collaborative leadership is the heart of sustainable digital transformation.
Amid a second wave of COVID-19 around the world, working remotely is sharply on the rise. More and more people are getting their tasks done at home. Despite having the freedom to work from anywhere, it is important to consider the challenges of getting tasks done remotely. It can be difficult to balance your work and personal life, especially, if you are not able to complete your tasks in time due to lack of communication and coordination with your team members.
Communication and collaboration with the team members is a common barrier when employees are working remotely and this is where Convo comes into play with abundance of features for its users. One of the key benefits of using Convo for remote working is that you can achieve a better work life balance while boosting productivity.
WHY CONVO?
Convo offers a variety of productivity bolstering features that encourage businesses to unify their workplaces and make Convo their go-to collaborative app. With Convo Simplify, you can integrate several email accounts with Convo and benefit from the full scope of features for each of them. Users can integrate their O365, Outlook, Zimbra, Gmail, Hotmail, or any other email account that works with IMAP APIs, with Convo’s interface via IMAP. Email communication with external clients, partners or even other co-workers can now flow through your easy to navigate Convo feed. This means you now have the option to compose, reply, reply-all, forward, mark SPAM/read and delete emails, all from within Convo.
Managing the workflow can be tedious, when working remotely. For teams and individuals to remain productive, you need a communication tool, like Convo and a feature like Easy Flow. It serves as a simple and reliable way to manage your workflow and optimize business processes through automation. It helps you keep your employees in sync, so that approval requests are streamlined, which in turn speeds up the internal processes. Not just that, you can also customize your organizational workflow with Easy Flow by Convo.
Brainstorming ideas and completing a task that requires team efforts can seem impossible when working remotely. But Convo’s chat is a great way to have quick discussions. Instant messages are much better than emails because they help in keeping remote employees more connected with the opportunity to chat separately with a single team member or by creating a group chat to communicate with a bunch of teammates at the same time. Also, email communication can get boring and monotonous, keeping this in mind Convo offers gifs and emoji to light up your project-centric conversations.
You can elevate your experience of chatting by combing Convo’s instant messaging with audio and video calling. So even if you are working from home or anywhere else, you can now seamlessly collaborate through remote engagement, all from within Convo.
ROCK YOUR WORK-FROM-HOME PERFORMANCE
Doesn’t it all sound so great? Yes, it does! Don’t make your life more complicated than it already is, especially, if you are working remotely. Convo knows and understands the struggles individuals might be wanting to overcome right this minute. Struggles of remaining productive or experiencing difficulties with communicating remotely, whatever it may be, Convo can help keep your tasks running and improve your work-from-home performance!
The entire business world is changing rapidly. But while the HR is guiding all this corporate change, the HR department itself requires changes to evolve into a more technology-based profession. Though HR serves as a helping hand, it has its own challenges and struggles. However, these challenges can be overcome by embarking into the modern world of HR with Convo. Convo will not only streamline and automate the operations of HR but will also help the department drive a successful change across the organization.
The future of onboarding
Building a strong manager-employee relationship is one of the most challenging part of the onboarding process. But through Convo you can seamlessly onboard employees where the HR can create a post for the newcomer to connect with the relevant team members.
Not just that, you can also decrease the amount of paperwork for your HR department by sharing the training sessions, updates on upcoming workshops, forms, policies, SOP documents (contract and insurance) in just a click.
No more chasing around
One of the hardest job of the HR department is to communicate announcements through email with having to check whether it has been read by everyone. However, with Convo’s acknowledgement post feature the HR can now ensure whether the urgent announcements have been read by employees across the organization. So the great news is that you no more have to chase around as you can set notification reminders for every 24 hours.
Your way to motivation
For a fact, public recognition make the employees feel more valued and engaged. But as an HR professional you are not sure about how to begin with it. The HR department can make use of Convo as a platform to highlight and reward high achievers and great employee performances in public, leading to a happier and motivated workforce.
Isolation to engagement
Low employee engagement is a business killer and is a major challenge for the HR department. Overcome the risks associated with a disengaged workforce by having them engaged in the trendiest activities at the workplace through Convo’s Analytics Dashboard. It lets you break off the isolation at digital work streams by keeping the employees up to date with the trending topics and hashtags.
Finding the right fit
One common difficulty faced by the HR department worldwide is the pressure of recruiting the right human resource. Take the stress out of hiring the right fit for your company with Convo. Our go to option of team directory helps in identifying department experts to bring in their valuable opinions. This is definitely a great tool to improve the quality of candidates while reducing potential bad hires.
It is believed that technological advancements make everyday life easier, and we believe that if this change is embraced inside an HR department, it will certainly maximize benefits and minimize problems for the organization as a whole.
Therefore, Convo is your one stop solution to make a strategic impact in your organization. With attention to user experience and loads of features, we strive to spark innovation within the HR department. NOW, it’s time for the HR to step up and shine!
If you’re still using email with your coworkers, your fancy tools are not giving you a true new-age collaboration experience. Finally, a solution to the email hell we live in! Imagine not have hundreds of unread and irrelevant emails piling up your inbox and causing you stress every time it catches your eye.
Majority of your emails are generated with internal email communications. What if all that went away and only critical external email communications were generated. With Convo Simplify, users now have deep two-way email communications from one interface, while still having all the new-age powerful collaboration features to collaborate with co-workers. This powerful combination will help unclutter email by decreasing internal email generation by almost 90%.
It could be emails from external clients, partners or even other co-workers (yes, not everyone in a 10,000 employee company may be on Convo) – all your communication now flows through your easy to navigate Convo feed. You can now compose, reply, reply-all, forward, mark SPAM/read, delete emails straight from within Convo.
A client or a co-worker sends an email, it comes to your feed via an integration, you collaborate with your entire team without generating any more emails. Then you can simply reply to the original email to the customer from within the same thread! Email Simplified!
Convo offers a variety of productivity bolstering features, and this latest feature will encourage users to make Convo their go-to collaborative app. The company has officially announced that the Convo Simplify feature is widely available for Web, iPhone, Android, and Desktop app.
The company quoted in an official statement, “Convo Simplify simplifies work communication by helping unclutter work communications. Using Convo’s collaboration platform with Simplify, users will find unnecessary emails no longer get generated.”With the release of Convo Simplify, a user can integrate several email accounts with Convo and benefit from the full scope of features for each of them. Users can integrate their O365, Outlook, Zimbra, Gmail, Hotmail, or any email account that works with IMAP APIs, with Convo’s interface via IMAP.
Convo Simplify now allows a user to respond to emails as well as other forms of synchronous and asynchronous messaging all from one platform.
Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited (PTCL), has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Convo Corporation, a leader in Enterprise Social Collaboration Platforms based out of Silicon Valley.
This partnership aims to bring the next-generation employee collaboration and communication solution to Pakistan, which is designed for enterprises especially those who have a vast frontline workforce. As per a recent study, such collaboration tools can boost the productivity of employees by 25%.
On the occasion, Osman Rashid, CEO, Convo, said, “PTCL can now offer a localized software and infrastructure collaboration to enterprises in Pakistan that have mission critical requirements. For instance, in the case of the banking sector, due to recent regulations set by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) that requires banks to host all their data and subsequent related products, in a cloud infrastructure that is based within the country. PTCL can thus provide this next-generation enterprise wide collaboration platform to all the banks in line with SBP regulations.”
This collaboration offers a first-of-its-kind Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based Enterprise Social Collaboration Platform that is entirely hosted in Pakistan. Enterprises in Pakistan will now have both options, whereby they can either have the solution hosted in a Pakistan-based cloud or on the premises.
On the occasion, Saad Muzaffar Warraich, Chief Technology & Information Officer, PTCL, said, “We, at PTCL, see great value of platforms like Convo in the future, whereby our huge workforce around the country will be able to connect via their smartphones anywhere, anytime. This has the potential to bring increased operational efficiencies, greater visibility, control and a reduced response time from our field operations.”
Convo provides rich collaboration capabilities, simplified and optimized workforce interactions that can really benefit companies with many non-desk employees, who rely on mobile communications, geographically distributed business, networks that need centralized synchronization and companies that require coordination to achieve standardization.
Globally governments are setting regulations to protect consumer and citizen data. Banks, tele-communication companies, healthcare companies, public bodies and consumer enterprises now prefer to host their consumer data inside their country of operations. PTCL and Convo partnership allows to fulfill such regulations and secure citizens’ data within Pakistan.
We as human beings are always determined to run the road of success, the road everyone’s hungry for. For which we begin by setting goals and promising ourselves that we will do whatever it takes us to achieve them.
A BETTER VERSION OF YOURSELF
If you are still on a look out for the road to success, begin by becoming a better version of yourself and grow up to the next level. If you happen to notice, everything around us is getting better and better with each passing day, but unfortunately humans believe that they are the finished article and choose to remain the same year after year. We need to realize that through action, personal development and self-education, one can truly reach their full potential because a better life comes from becoming a better you. Upgrade yourself in all the arenas of life and know that success comes to those who develop themselves consistently.
“Hard work and a little faith can break any mountain, if you’re willing to venture into the unknown”.
Success does not happen overnight. But fortunately, our daily actions have a huge impact and can take us closer and closer to the success we desire. The narratives of the journey won’t unfold itself until you take a step ahead. Though in the beginning it might seem impossible and difficult, it may even look as though you will not be able to reach your desired outcome with thoughts of quitting, but with focused commitment and a strong belief on yourself, you will get through the journey. Make sure to keep the end in mind so that you develop the discipline to commit to the daily tasks with all the hard work to achieve your ambitions. Make sure to keep the end in mind so that you develop the discipline to commit to the daily tasks with all the hard work to achieve your ambitions.
“Never measure the height of a mountain until you reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.” – Daag Hammerskjold
As quoted by Hammerskjold, once you reach the top or up to the measure of your success, all the barriers will seem nothing compared to the feeling of achievement and fulfillment.
THE CONNECTION OF CREATIVITY
If you take a look around at successful people, they tend to be creative thinkers. Therefore, creativity could be your way towards success. Through imagination and creativity one can develop valuable ideas which can be implemented successfully.
However, traditional work settings do not allow for creativity to be brought out. This is why traditional office work is becoming a thing of the past with an ever-growing amount of businesses allowing individuals’ flexibility in the way they work. This flexibility is key for the future of business and is beneficial to both the performance of workers and businesses as a whole. Therefore, remote working should be embraced.
LIVE YOUR DREAM WITH CONVO
Convo could be the way to evoke your creativity while enabling you to live your dream of working from the mountains or remotely from anywhere. It has been designed to keep candidates independent, flexible, and resourceful by providing a smooth transition to your remote set up. Facts prove that remote working over the years has been an efficient and effective way to get work done, which has recently become a full on global work movement during the pandemic.
Source: https://www.oberlo.com/blog/remote-work-statistics
According to an estimate in Forbes, in 2018, 50 percent of the U.S. workforce was projected to be remote; across the pond, Europe’s remote workers have grown from 7.7% to 9.8% in the past decade.
On the other hand, Convo itself has supported work flexibility by allowing almost 40% of its employees to work remotely. It is an honor for us to see our employees embracing the culture of remote working from Abbottabad, Murree, Jhang, Haripur, etc. These primarily belong to our product and their efforts are seen by everyone who uses our application.
YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS
Ultimately, working remotely can improve the health and wellness of employees by reducing the level of stress. Studies suggest that employees who work from the mountains or from places close to nature tend to be more creative and productive for the company, thus succeeding in their roles and careers.
By now you’ve seen that remote working could be your route to success and a way to embrace your goals. Venture into the new world with Convo and come out successful.
The easiest and fastest way to communicate with your team. Try Convo App out for free!
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