No company can escape the collaboration conundrum. The way teams accomplish work (not to mention when and where) is constantly evolving—companies need to redefine what it means for their teams to collaborate successfully.
Enterprise companies are no different. While they may have reached the apex of growth, their large workforce, complex organizational structure, and numerous processes present new challenges to collaboration efforts. That’s why having tools like Trello Enterprise in place is crucial.
With Trello Enterprise, companies can provide their teams with flexible work experiences, encourage knowledge sharing, and help teams manage roles and responsibilities, making it easier to tackle whatever challenges large-scale collaboration throws their way.
1. Trello Gives Teams Flexibility To Tackle Complex Processes
The larger a company grows, the more difficult it can be to get work done. Work solutions like Trello Enterprise give teams the flexibility needed to navigate the complexity of large companies.
In a global study on collaboration, Slack found that employees at large enterprises cited bureaucracy as the “most challenging part of work.” Red tape and rigid processes can slow down a team’s momentum, impacting their ability to accomplish work in an acceptable time frame.
Imagine your design team creates a new prototype or mock up for an upcoming mobile feature, but before they can submit it to developers, they need various key stakeholders to sign off on the design. Two stakeholders prefer meetings, one prefers email (which the team will likely have to resend), while the fourth, who’s always on the go, checks the design from the road. Juggling these different processes not only takes up designers’ time, but any delay in sign-off can cause them to miss a scheduled development window.
Red tape and rigid processes can slow down a team’s momentum, impacting their ability to accomplish work in an acceptable time frame.
Collaboration can help teams navigate that red tape. Consider cross-functional teams, where each team member represents a specific department. This type of collaboration brings together invested parties to tackle a project or work toward a common goal. For those earlier mobile designers, working on a cross-functional team focused on delivering a new mobile feature would make it easier to get prototype approval.
Flexible work tools like Trello can help make your enterprise-wide collaboration efforts a success. These days, it’s not uncommon for enterprise companies to have teams spread across multiple floors, physical (and home) offices, and even time zones. Trello Enterprise gives your teams a virtual workspace where they can connect, view and assign tasks, and share information as if they were all together in their own corner of the office.
Trello Enterprise also empowers teams’ autonomy, which can be instrumental in teams taking ownership of their work and deliverables. While teams may exist within a complex organization, they can carve out workflows that fit their needs to a T. This enables them to deliver on the expectations of the company and leadership while still giving teams the autonomy and control over a fully customizable work experience.
2. Trello Supports Information Sharing Company-Wide
An effective knowledge management solution can help enterprise companies overcome the major challenges of sharing information while also boosting visibility and transparency among departments.
Employees value transparency and having a clear understanding of what’s happening across the company—knowledge sharing helps.
Yet, more than half of the companies surveyed in Deloitte’s 2020 Global Human Capital Trends Survey said silos, or keeping information contained to a single team or department, challenged their company’s ability to effectively share information. In that same survey, 36% of companies admitted that they lacked the technology needed to support knowledge sharing.
Knowledge management also involves your human talent—sharing their knowledge, expertise, and experience.
It’s true that the rapid evolution of technology requires companies to adopt more collaborative approaches to managing information, but it’s equally important that companies recognize that information is more than just customer, financial, or market data. Knowledge management also involves your human talent—sharing their knowledge, expertise, and experience.
Enterprise-level collaboration can be tricky when you can’t keep track of who knows what information or who you can ask for help or insight. Leveraging widely used communication and collaboration platforms as knowledge management systems encourages team members to make their knowledge and expertise visible to the rest of the company.
Trello Enterprise offers teams dedicated workspaces that can be used as a knowledge hub. Teams across the company can use that space to centralize information on important accounts, product features and functionality, development schedules, and internal communications. Need a product expert? Head to the product knowledge board where managers, customer support members, and trainers can share their knowledge of the product in feature-specific cards. If a team member has a question, they can tag one of these experts and keep their conversation—and those super important answers—in one place for future users.
3. Trello Helps Teams Clarify Roles And Responsibilities
With so many players in the collaboration game, it can be difficult to keep track of who’s in charge of which tasks or who to go to with questions and information or for help.
Enterprise companies (23.7%) admit that their most common collaboration challenge is “unclear responsibilities,” or knowledge of which team members are responsible for which aspects of work. Without a clear understanding of who is meant to drive a certain task, assumptions of ownership might be made that leave no one actually in charge of ensuring the task gets accomplished. The end result? Missed deadlines, product delays, and frustration.
Top agile companies that pride themselves on working quickly and efficiently proactively define roles and responsibilities. This allows employees to focus on getting work done, not chasing down answers as to who to go to for budget approval, finished reports, or an update on a project’s status.
If you want to establish clear roles and responsibilities, start with a clear org structure. Think of it as the “who’s who” of your company—a way to visually communicate to employees, especially new ones, where everyone sits in the company and what work they are responsible for.
Or, get creative with your org chart and dedicate a Trello Enterprise workspace as an interactive people directory. Use cards as employee profiles, and go beyond just a name and title by including a photo, a list of responsibilities, and get-to-know-you-type facts. This can be done on any level—company-wide, department, or team.
Speaking of teams, if you create a new cross-functional team to tackle special projects at your company, teams can dedicate a column or card within their workspace to clearly documenting team member roles and their responsibilities. By keeping this information visible and centralized, it’s easier for team members to hold one another accountable but also to ensure that all necessary tasks have an assigned team member.
Get Ready For What Comes Next
“What it takes to succeed tomorrow will be different from what it takes to succeed today,” writes Martin Reeves, senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. With how quickly work (and collaboration) continues to evolve, Reeves couldn’t be more right.
Mastering the art of sustainable, large-scale collaboration requires companies to equip their teams with tools that can evolve and change as their needs do. Once they do, companies can move past productivity and process pain points and focus on the bigger picture: delivering results for their bottom line and their customers.
For more on how Trello Enterprise can help your teams take their collaboration to the next level, check out Trello’s in-depth ebook, “Stop, Collaborate, and Listen: A Guide to Collaborating Across Teams.”
Good or bad, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter (@trello)!
