Collaboration Not Only Increases Sales, It Improves…
While many organizations aspire to create a culture of collaboration, today’s truth is that legacy technologies, geography and other challenges tend to keep departments, people and knowledge siloed. For any brand wondering if collaboration tools are worth the investment, a new report from Dimension Data makes the case:
The 2016 Connected Enterprise Report, which surveyed 580 IT managers, IT directors and CIOs, as well as 320 line of business (LoB) managers across 15 different countries, noted an investment in collaboration tools such as document and file sharing, enterprise social, and other methods to connect employees across departments resulted in both expected and unexpected benefits.
According to the survey, the top three objectives for collaboration investments in order of importance were (1) to improve individual employee productivity, (2) to improve sales and revenue, and (3) to accelerate decision making.
For the majority of respondents, these were all achieved:
- 68% said collaboration tools met expectations for improving individual employee productivity, while another 16% said it exceeded them.
- 62% said collaboration met expectations for improving sales and revenue, with another 20% saying it exceeded them.
- and 72% noted their use of collaboration technology met their expectations to accelerate decision-making, while another 13% said it exceeded them.
But collaboration across employees and departments also created other benefits including making business processes more efficient (59% said collaboration met expectations, while 20% said it exceeded them) – and improved customer service.
While only 2% of the approximately 1,000 surveyed said their main collaboration objective was to improve customer service, 66% said collaboration met expectations for improving it, and 20% said it exceeded them.
And when employee and customer engagement increase at the same time, that’s a win-win. According to the Gallup State of the American Workplace Report, “when organizations successfully engage their customers and their employees, they experience a 240% boost in performance-related business outcomes compared to an organization with neither engaged employees nor engaged customers.”
As many brands begin to focus on digital transformation to improve business processes, engage customers more effectively and consistently and create new revenue streams, greater collaboration plays a starring role. For those surveyed that were already focusing on digital transformation, 58% said collaboration met objectives for facilitating their transformation objectives, and 16% said it exceeded them.
Click here to read how a Microsoft customer is accelerating its digital transformation and realizing many of the benefits above through increased collaboration.
