Finding the Collaboration Tool That’s Right for Your Workplace

02 Apr, 2015 |

Business team drawing a new project

Email can sometimes be so overwhelming.

With the extensive use of email for almost everything, online communication and collaboration have become essential for doing business successfully today. A variety of tools have emerged offering companies  as small as two employees to corporations with thousands of employees the resources to effectively organize project and task management. These tools aim to get rid of notepad to-do lists, extensive job submission processes and even emails (where tasks can get buried in your inbox forever).

How do you choose which one will work best for your workplace?

We’ve compiled a list of five very different online project management tools along with an unbiased summary of each service. Take a look for yourself and see how you can start improving your team communication.

Asana

“Asana puts conversations & tasks together.” This service strives to eliminate email with a simple system that focuses on organizing teams, projects and tasks by breaking them down into a to-do list. You can’t edit any uploaded files, but you can have discussions underneath each task and share them with team members to view the progress. This works best for small companies or departments.

Customers of Asana include: Dropbox, CBS Interactive, Pinterest, Uber and Airbnb

Basecamp

“Basecamp helps you wrangle people with different roles, responsibilities, and objectives toward a common goal.” This tool specializes in connecting multiple departments through file sharing and live editing, like Google Docs. It is communication-focused with email-like messaging within the tool. It works best for mid-large sized companies or teams than span many different jobs.

Customers of Basecamp include: Twitter, Nike, Fox Sports, NASA and Etsy

Central Desktop

“Collaboration for marketers and agencies.” This cloud-based tool enables all communication and project management from start to finish. In fact, with its web conferencing, instant messaging, discussion forums and instant document editing, you don’t even need to work in a physical office. This works best for agencies or digital-based companies.

Customers of Central Desktop include: WD-40, CBS, MLB.com, Sesame Street and American Red Cross

Mavenlink

“Connect the dots between your people, projects, and profits.” This tool offers advanced business and project management with a place to breakdown projects into tasks, organize all files, measure time and expenses, take care of billing and produce reports. Businesses can monitor multiple operations through Mavenlink. This works best for mid-large sized companies.

Customers of Mavenlink include: Solutions 8; Research, Inc.; APlus Interior Design & Remodeling and Legacy Health Strategies

Trello

“Trello is the free, flexible, and visual way to organize anything with anyone.” This streamlining tool is largely based off of Pinterest’s design. “Cards” (a lot like pins) represent individual tasks that you can organize by the task’s progressive state (like a Pinterest board) from start to finish. While there is no file editing in this app, you can upload as many files as you want, add comments and add multiple people to each card. This works best for departments or freelancers.

Customers of Trello include: Google, The New York Times, PayPal, Spotify and Kickstarter