The 21st century can truly be called the age of digital transformation with technology determining everything from the way we order food and the way we work to the new ways of managing remote teams in times of social distancing.
While offices have witnessed an increased use of collaborative tools and advanced technology, the current situation is seeing a paradigm shift in the structure of the traditional office space. From eliminating the need for paperwork to eliminating the need for physical office space itself, modern technology has completely transformed the working space, swapping desks and conference tables for virtual platforms.
However, the growing popularity of these places is also raising new concerns over the efficient management of remote teams in terms of work quality and productivity.
This, in turn, results in increasing demand for virtual platforms that enable monitoring and collaboration while managing remote teams across different geographical distances and varied time zones. The need has become particularly pressing in the current scenario of lockdowns and social distancing.
Advantages of a Virtual Workforce
Leveraging Diverse Talent While Managing Remote Teams
One of the biggest advantages of digital workplaces is that they enable you to hire talent from across the wide spectrum of the world. This, in turn, eliminates the problem of talent shortage and gives you the ability to gather intelligent resources under an overarching virtual roof.
You no longer have to pay an exorbitant amount to hire talent and can take your pick from the global talent pool to build a team that boosts your company performance. You further need to offer a creative and innovative digital workplace to attract the best talent.
High-Performing Virtual Teams
Once you have assembled a diverse pool of talent, your need to distribute and transform the individual employees into well-functioning virtual teams working in perfect harmony with each other.
This requires effective collaboration tools and strategies that help build bridges between you and your remote team, your team managers and employees, and finally, between employees themselves. Once the channels of communication, sharing, and constant connection have been established, you can deploy these high-performing virtual teams to streamline and enhance your operational efficiency.
Lower Operating Costs
Another reason that makes switching to digital workplaces is a smart choice is the lower operating costs while enjoying a higher quality of work and boosting productivity.
Digital workplaces enable you to carry out essential business services like accounting, bookkeeping, accounts payable processing and data analysis at a fraction of the original cost as they implement a streamlined method of functioning that combines manual interaction with automated efficiency.
Additionally, these platforms are built on transparency and track the status of every project, every task from beginning to the end. This helps you stay abreast of the current status of all projects and processes, provide feedback until the processes are being carried out to your satisfaction.
Building Connections
As we shift from connected desks to a connected network, we need advanced communication tools to build connections. Many times, remote teams or employees feel a little lost or disconnected due to the lack of open communication. This may make them feel like they are not getting enough managerial support or clear instructions about work.
What you need is a fully-integrated collaboration platform with an array of communication features including email, instant messaging, enterprise tools and virtual meeting tools to establish open and easy routes for increased interaction.
This doesn’t just provide remote teams with an easy and instant way of staying in touch, but also makes relaying new work instructions so much easier.
Tips for Managing Remote Teams
Structured Supervision
When it comes to managing remote teams, you need to supervise in an organized manner. The team should not be micromanaged, nor should they feel as if they have been left to their own devices.
In between these two options, lies the concept of structured supervision. This entails setting up organize daily check-ins with your team to review the status of work and creating a well-defined schedule for status updates with specified deadlines and established formats.
Apart from these reports, you should keep asking your remote working teams for daily updates and organize team meetings via video conferencing at regular intervals.
The ARDEM Collaboration Platforms provides you with all these facilities and more. We not only provide your with help desk support using ZenDesk but also our proprietary ticketing system to resolve all requests, issues and concerns in real-time.
Open Communication Channels
You need to have a simple and easy way to immediately connect with your remote working teams in case of new instructions or any urgent requirements.
This requires tools that provide an instant connection for swift communication.
Our collaboration platform offers you a live chat feature with which you can get in touch with your project manager and team. Additionally, you can also chat with your team members via email, live chat or video call.
Easy Access to Information
A fully-functional digital workplace also comes with tools to share data and information that need to be processed.
The information or data can be stored in secure online resource libraries and access can be given on a need-to-know basis. The processed data can be similarly uploaded into another secure folder for easy access and sharing.
The ARDEM Collaboration Platform offers you the option of loading all your data into secure folders on our cloud storage or simply email us all the data that needs to be processed.
Additionally, we can also process data from your physical documents. All you need to do is mail all your physical documents, forms, applications, bills, invoices and more to our headquarters in New Jersey. We will transform them into usable data using our high-speed scanners and optical character recognition technology.
This data is then processed and turned into actionable insights using a mixture of human intelligence and smart automation.
Collaboration Tools for Managing Remote Teams
Remote teams can be managed with the use of advanced technological tools that enable face-to-face interaction between you and your remote team.
Therefore you need a digital workplace that comes fully integrated with collaboration features that enable multiple avenues of communication, discussion along with multiple resources for sharing data and exchanging information. This, in turn, builds a sense of culture and community in the workplace.
Social Interaction Helps in Managing Remote Teams
As the office space yields to the digital plane, the opportunities of social interaction between team members also reduces. It is no longer as simple as cracking a joke with the co-worker at the next desk.
Therefore, there is a need to create team interaction groups or chats where employees can interact with each other remotely in social capacity to build stronger relationships. After all, employees are more likely to assist those they know personally.
Encouragement and Support
In the light of the current situation which has seen an abrupt shift to working remotely from home, you need to check-in on your employees to make sure that they are doing okay. Offering regular encouragement and emotional support wherever required can go a long way in motivating your employees to do better.
Just ask them about the challenges they are facing working remotely or inquire about their well-being and whether they are facing any issues due to the current crisis. A simple question can show your employees that you care and make managing remote teams much easier.
The ARDEM Collaboration Platform for Managing Remote Teams
If you have been searching for a fully-integrated digital platform to manage your teams and employees remotely then consider the ARDEM Collaboration Platform.
The ARDEM Collaboration Platform is a cloud-based digital workplace that allows you to work from anywhere and stay connected. The platform provides you with a customizable dashboard view allows you to see the progress of your project in real-time while managing remote teams effectively.
Here’s how we make it possible:
- ARDEM will provide you with unique login credentials, which you can use to sign in to the ARDEM Collaboration Manager online. Once you have gained access to the platform, you will find a variety of collaboration tools waiting for you.
- The cloud server is provided by Amazon Web Services with strict security protocols in place. Each user has a secure login with the latest SSO protocols to ensure data security when working with remote teams.
- You can use your workspace to manage work assignments for your team, upload documents onto secure folders, or download the final processed files.
- APIs can also be further built in to optimize and streamline your large volume data processing. This is achieved remotely through advanced cloud-based technologies.
The ARDEM Advantage in Managing Remote Teams
Data Sharing: You can easily drag and drop your files into secure folders on the ACM and share them with the entire team. You can also have your team members forward emails to this platform. We will sort and categorize them as required.
Live Chat and Feedback: You can further review the status of your project and also follow up on issues related to your assignment. In case any changes are required, you can leave comments and new instructions directly on a file or assignment.
ARDEM Analysts: Our analysts are well-trained to communicate directly with customers via email, chat, audio, video, and share files.
In addition, a backup analyst is always trained in case of any contingencies like illness, vacation, or the need to scale up. As a result, two or more ARDEM Analysts make up 1 or more effective FTE to ensure that come what may, your work never stops.
ARDEM Bots: ARDEM uses a combination of Data Entry, Data Capture, Automation, Machine Learning and AI technologies to process your work. As more data is processed, ARDEM Bots increase efficiency to work faster and with greater accuracy.
Real-Time Updates: You can also check the progress of your projects and keep track of counts, metrics, and progress using the dashboards in real-time. This feature also allows you to monitor team performance while managing remote teams.
Additional Features
- Survey Management: We also offer extensive survey management facilities via the ARDEM Collaboration Platform, including tracking lead forms.
- Tracking Surveys: We also process and track your surveys. Once the surveys have been received or scanned, the counts are recorded and an electronic copy of each lead form is shared through the file manager.
- Live Status of Every Campaign: You can use your workspace to easily track the status of campaigns, i.e., which have been received, are in the queue or have been completed.
- Email Notifications: The platform also sends automated email notifications after a campaign has been completed and is ready to be downloaded. These can also be set up to send to specific team members as required.
- Push Button Reporting: You can further track campaigns on a daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly basis.
So, are you ready to sail these stormy seas together? You don’t even need to install any special software, just open your online browser and log into the ARDEM Collaboration Platform and that’s why we have a long list of satisfied customers including government departments and big market players like HubSpot, H&M, Ted Baker London, etc.
Give your business the ARDEM advantage today!