“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Teamwork is often considered the same as Collaboration. Although both of these contribute to the successful running and growth of the enterprise, there still exists a wide difference between both. In the case of teamwork, all the members work at a personal level by sharing the synchronized outcome results from the associates. Due to the complex structure of the enterprise in the modern era, it is vital for the people to work collaboratively to ensure long-term business stability. It is basically the process of communal decision-making among all the team members to jointly achieve determined outcomes. The skills possessed by the good collaborator are neither spoon-fed by any faculty nor taught in the corporate training. It should automatically come from once inside since we need to learn effectively and build these skills on our own.

Ways for building a Collaborative, Successful Work Environment

No doubt establishing a collaborative enterprise environment is a tedious job, but here comes the few points which every enterprise professional should keep in mind to cultivate team cohesion:

• Communication expectations: Meeting the teammate’s communication expectations lays the primary ground for the enterprise collaboration. To foster this, all the team members must be intimated about their team roles and responsibilities and each of them should be given the equal say in the business decision making process.  
• Establish team goals: To ensure the overall enterprise growth and success, it should formulate and revise the enterprise short term and long term business goals periodically. This works as the weapon for creating a positive workplace environment and enables all the employees to collectively think and work for the target completion. Enforcing transparency reduces the scope of confusion, misunderstanding and disintegration of team cohesion.
• Encourage innovation: Adopting the path of open ended questions and brainstorming helps the enterprise in encouraging innovation. Team members are coached to handle the situations effectively which helps in setting up the creative and impressive enterprise collaborative work culture.

Key benefits of Enterprise Collaborative Strategy

The comprehensive enterprise collaboration strategy promotes numerous business benefits. Few of these are discussed below:

• Enhances enterprise performance and productivity: With the promotion of collaboration in the enterprise it enables the smooth flow of knowledge, resources, data and business practices among the enterprise hierarchy. Business employees will be more tuned not only among themselves but also with the business clients. In the absence of enterprise collaboration, the great bunch of employee’s knowledge would be wasted and will remain untapped. 
• Minimizes the phone cost and travelling expenses: The practice of virtual teams minimizes the need to conduct face to face meetings, which will drastically minimize the lodging and travel related enterprise expenses. Obviously the uses of instant messaging services are far cheaper in comparison to that of conducting long distance telephonic conversations.
• Collaborate the scattered and distributed teams: In the case of distributed enterprise networks, collaboration among the team members plays a crucial role in making the business interactions productive and seamless. Instead of appointing the business heads at each location, collaboration makes it possible to have a single head for remotely handling all the business affairs.
• Contribute enterprise processes flexibility:The complicated levels of bureaucracy and red tape are significantly removed that hinders the smooth enterprise external and internal communication. Establishing and promoting collaboration among the teammates helps in significantly cutting the operational cost and improving the enterprise sales process.
• Gets tasks completed faster: The complex and the large task can easily be done without any need to wait for the approval from the other business section or no longer wait for the remote resources. Collaboration helps the enterprise in eliminating duplicity, coordinating different tasks and to regularly monitor the client’s progress and to ensure that all are working in coordination with each other.
• Leverages social interaction: Increasing the involvement of social media would contribute significantly for the inclination of enterprise business processes. Social interaction is the natural component that not only emphasizes the corporate life but also improves the team mate’s personal life as well.
• Attract and retain talent: There is no denying the fact that the employees always prefer the work culture that supports teamwork and skill development. Collaboration is the vital tool to provide the common platform for the enterprise employees to foster their overall growth and progress. Obviously motivated and satisfied employees are the asset for the enterprise and they act as the top company’s advocate.
• Increase competitive advantage: Corporative intelligence among the various business units especially for the marketing, finance and the enterprise product design department tends to increase the business competitiveness in the market. Improved collaborative bonds enable the various enterprises to join hands and to put forward the joint ventures in order to earn more profits. 
• Expand market share: There is no denying the fact that the stronger stakeholder relationships significantly increases the enterprise knowledge for the current market place. It improves the business ability to identify the best and new budding talent, improve customer service and suit distinct customer segments for promoting the enterprise business practices across the globe.

Moving Forward

There is a proven fact that collaboration should be wishfully followed by the employees. It is analyzed that the forceful practice of collaboration fails to produce a positive outcome. No one can force collaboration on teammates. Organically collaboration work culture needs to be inherited within the organization. The prime motto of collaboration is to deliver healthy and timely outcome results. It is vital for the enterprise to wisely adopt the various collaboration platforms. Since there is no denying the fact that the wrong choice of collaboration platforms not only hinders the organization growth but it also has a drastic impact on the organization work culture and most importantly on the employee’s morale. Although establishing a collaborative workplace environment takes time, gradually it will contribute to the overall growth and success of the enterprise.