The modern workplace is rapidly changing. With the increasing number of employees working remotely or on a flexible schedule, the traditional office environment where everyone works within close quarters from 9 to 5 each day is no longer the norm. As organizations make this shift, it can be difficult to ensure that every team member has what he or she needs to effectively collaborate, especially when employees are not always available face-to-face. But collaboration tools like Cisco Spark make it possible for team members to effectively work together while completing projects.
What is Cisco Spark, and What Makes It Different?
Cisco Spark is a cloud-based and app-centric service that makes team collaboration simple and secure. The platform is designed with user experience in mind, offering a simple and intuitive interface. This subscription-based service that’s delivered from the Cisco Collaboration Cloud, makes it easy for users to add services on demand like integrations and bots. It also has developer-friends APIs that enable you to customize processes and workstreams to fit your organization’s unique needs.
Fluid Collaboration
Cisco Spark provides everything your team needs to collaborate in one convenient place. Like Slack or Microsoft Teams, Cisco Spark offers a messaging and content sharing platform where employees can directly communicate with one another and share files with ease. But it’s much more fluid. Cisco Spark ties in with your phone system and video calling systems so that you can take a message from your phone, convert to a video call on the go, and then switch over to the conference room video system. Team members outside of the office can join conference calls from their desktop, mobile device, or video system.
And this all happens in one continuous workstream before, during, and after the meeting to ensure that everyone stays on the same page.
More Effective Communication
Not only does Cisco Spark make it easier for remote and traveling team members to interact with everyone, but it can also increase productivity and enhance the effectiveness of your teams. With real-time communication and collaboration tools, employees can work faster to make better, more informed decisions. Nix the long email chains that get lost in employee’s inboxes. Instead, team members can directly communicate with one another and share files seamlessly. This also improves the efficiency of meetings as your team is able to capture notes and action items and share them with the group in real-time, thus improving team agility and accountability.
Better Visual Collaboration
Perhaps one of the most unique features of Cisco Spark is the whiteboarding tool. While it can often be difficult to visually collaborate when team members are not face-to-face, Cisco Spark solves this problem by enabling teams to draw and annotate ideas while brainstorming new ideas. This helps connect the physical and virtual meeting spaces while allowing team members to brainstorm together more effectively.
