It's amazing to me that in the business world, nothing ever stops. Though everyone involved tends to balance the amount of work they do with living their everyday lives, businesses quickly become a separate, ever-moving machine that needs constant maintenance. Production has to keep moving, deadlines have to be met, sales need to be made, and each component of the business only has so much flexibility until things start breaking down.
Normally this isn't an issue, because as people we’re excellent at problem-solving. We can plan within employee schedules, maneuver around national holidays, and deal with surprise delays in such a way that the cogs in the machine keep moving forward. Unfortunately, there are times when a significant change in strategy is the only option, whether it’s because of something positive such as major unexpected growth in your business, or something more tragic like the recent Coronavirus outbreak.
So when there are problems that seem insurmountable, when it looks as if there will be no other choice than for your business to take a hit, what do you do? Where does our amazing ability to problem solve take us then? More often than not, we look to build a solution through technology.
The Rise of Video Conferencing
I'd like to focus on one of the most useful tools in business today: collaborative workspaces. As internal business strategies shift to a more team-focused mindset, collaboration has become essential. We need near-instant communication, no matter where employees are located. In fact, it looks like even teleconferences won’t cut it anymore, with 79% of people saying video conferencing is the best team communication tool for creative and collaborative tasks, according to one Forbes survey.
The rise of video conferencing has allowed teams to continue to work and collaborate with each other from anywhere. Even in times where the rest of the world is closing itself off, like with the recent Coronavirus outbreak, teams within businesses are still able to stay on schedule thanks to collaborative workspace software such as Zoom, whose stock has seen record-high numbers lately because they had the solution that allowed businesses to keep moving forward under extreme circumstances.
It’s clear that this kind of software isn’t only a useful tool, it’s becoming a need for a lot of businesses. Even outside of regular meetings and calls, software like Slack is finding a home in day-to-day business operations, adding over 100,000 paid users during one-quarter last year. The demand for this kind of collaborative tool is only growing, and the question that needs to be asked is, what’s coming next?
-verb