How Team Collaboration Solutions Have Emerged to Replace Email

Workplace Transformation: The Art of Communication

For the last 15 years I have been centralising my working world around e-mail. One of the first things I received when I started my first job, was not a laptop or a pen, it was an e-mail address! It was my identity and it soon became my personal assistant. It helped me manage my workload, told me where I should go for meetings and allowed for team collaboration through being able to communicate with my colleagues. However, it was limited, and I found myself micro managing it to get the best use out of it. I created multiple folders and rules to try to improve its efficiency and while that helped, something was missing.

In this fast-paced, ambitious world that we live in, the art of communication with e-mail is becoming archaic and less effective. Society has redefined how we interact with each other and has evolved communications into short sentences, gifs, pictures and emojis. Why? Because sometimes, less is more.

Nowadays we are inundated with information and as a result we will favour responding to short questions over lengthy emails.

According to radicati.com, the number of worldwide e-mail users will be 2.9 billion by the end of 2019. Email usage is significant; however it is plateauing. Millennials and the newest generation entering the workforce “Generation Z”, are partially driving this. They look at e-mails the way I looked at a fax machine when I first joined the workforce, rarely used and not efficient. Rightfully so. When there are faster ways to get things done, why choose the outdated?

Watch this video to see how design and technology come together to create a truly collaborative work environment.

Team Collaboration

Companies today are finding it difficult to retain their best talent due to cost of living, lengthy commutes and the increasing priority of work life balance. Businesses with well-established communication tools enabling seamless remote working, are winning this battle. They know that investing in a robust collaboration solution is an investment for success. Research by McKinsey Global Institute has shown that companies can raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25 percent with smoother collaboration.

Why Are Huddle Spaces So Important and Relevant Now?

To be fair to e-mail, it was never intended to be a collaboration tool, it just inherited the task as our workplace evolved and the options were limited. Over the last few years many attempts have been made to plug the holes in the collaboration dam, by adding tools to the e-mail approach, like e-mail + messaging or e-mail + messaging + VC, but nothing addressed the wholistic collaboration nirvana that we have craved. Well nothing until now!

Webex Teams: Integrating Workflows

Since joining Cisco this year, I can genuinely say that my way of working has been transformed because of Webex Teams, regardless of my location. Collaborating in Teams has empowered me to multitask with ease, and I am refreshingly surprised at how infrequently I check my e-mail. With 100’s of app integrations, high quality video calling and interactive whiteboarding. I can centralise my workflow, edit shared documents and make fast interactive decisions with my team, all within one application.

So, to answer the big question. Is e-mail being replaced by collaboration solutions? Absolutely! and we are much better for it.

Want to learn more? Click here to see what Webex Teams can do for you and your business