Collaboration is more than just sharing your proposal document

In one of our recent blog articles, Content is King – How to optimize your content management, my colleague Kris writes: "Managing and maintaining content in and across documents is a challenge that most organizations face. [...] For knowledge organizations, content management should be a competitive advantage. But, managing content is not enough in itself. Organizations need to manage and maintain content across the organization – not only in some regions or offices, but globally. If you are talking about your product delivery, why should this be different in Germany vs Singapore?" 

He is correct, why should it be different?

If a hockey team only practices scoring goals, they will probably be world-class individuals scoring goals, but they would lose every match because they cannot collaborate among the starting lineup and therefore cannot work as a team.

They’ll need to be instructed on each of their tasks. One of them has to be the goalie, two of them have to be defense, and three of them have to be forwards. They’ll have to continuously swap players on the bench so the ones that are on the ice are always recovered.

The communication between the players, coach, staff and supporters has to be honest and trustworthy, so that everyone knows exactly what their work tasks are at all times, only then they will achieve their common goal – winning matches.

In XaitPorter, one of the advantages is the workflow. After you have built your document and sorted out each section, you then assign people to do the different tasks they are instructed to.

Colleagues will then be notified of each section they are responsible for, and their deadline. In some sections there can be many co-writers because you want input from different departments, and maybe they work in different countries, as well. Creating great document collaboration among teams and across borders. 

The content is stored in a database, and should be open and transparent so that the writers can easily get access to the content they need. If someone is sick or busy with other duties, it is easy for the co-writer to continue writing and complete the document.

If something needs to be communicated, you simply add a comment in the document and explain what changes need to be done. The writer will then be notified so he can make the change, if needed. 

This is how our clients can collaborate across departments, and everyone can work on the same document at the same time and therefore create large and complex documents faster, with higher quality.