Mobile collaboration – keeping your project teams connected

Workplaces can be anywhere. So how do you make for the most collaborative, most inspiring and most productive work environments when those spaces can be literally anywhere? This is what we do at Ricoh. Here’s a quick overview of the key elements you need to get a mobile workforce to deliver great projects.

Achieving remote project collaborations

Today, business is mobile. Be it your partners or your workers, chances are that they are more and more likely to be on the move, not in the same place or even the same time zones! Yet you need them to work together on important teamwork projects and collaborate on time-critical issues. We know that we get the best out of our people when they can engage and consult each other in meaningful, fully connected ways. The good news is that these modern mobility challenges to team collaboration can now be largely eliminated by powerful, flexible and easy-to-use work apps and technology.

At Ricoh, our goal is to help your people connect and collaborate. Simply ensuring you have quality video conferencing technology so your people aren’t frustrated by poor connections or reliability is not enough. It’s equally important to ensure ideas, conversations and priorities can be easily captured, shared and stored. Cloud based technologies mean it’s now very cost effective to implement, scale and transform any workspace into a truly virtual, collaborative workplace.

Unified Communication Systems

Visual communication is more than just seeing one another over a video link – it incorporates video, audio, documents and other media to ensure information, data and content can be shared effectively and seamlessly. To achieve this, it’s critical to deliver real-time interactive audio and video communication with multiple sources via the internet. Unlike the video conferencing systems of old, you should expect a system that’s easy to operate: walk in, turn it on and connect anywhere and on any platform. Of course it’s also critical that you can rely on your communications to be secure and protected.

Information Mobility

Making it as easy and intuitive for your workforce to present, consume and share information with colleagues, team members and stakeholders is essential. True information mobility means that every employee is able to access the documents and data they need, whenever and wherever they happen to be without compromising security. It also means information, content and data should move fluidly between paper and digital formats via a company-wide file sync and share solution that is accessible across a range of devices and platforms.

Connected Hardware

Presenting, producing and creating are key elements of the connected and collaborative workforce. So when it also needs to be mobile, it’s important to have hardware that can connect and communicate wirelessly with a range of devices, platforms and workspaces.

Interactive whiteboard solutions are one of the more interesting developments driving collaboration. Connecting to your team via multiple USB ports and Bluetooth, and through the cloud, can instantly transform your computer or mobile screen into the command center for team collaboration. And just like that you can develop and communicate concepts quickly with the whole team, no matter where they are, and then capture, store and distribute the work product to everyone.

Business projectors, too, have come along way. From small spaces to auditoriums, it’s now easier than ever to present and work ideas in any space while out and about in the world. All controlled from anywhere through connected computers and mobile devices.

Which brings us to printing technology often the least connected, least secure and most costly part of the information management and collaboration chain. As a leader in printing technology for many decades, we have evolved the humble printer into an efficient, connected and secure business asset. Our Ricoh printers can manage who documents are printed for, where from and even produce fast, low cost, high quality printouts or more complex offset printing jobs in any quantity.

Focus on the workflow

Underpinning all of these connected work apps and hardware, there needs to be well thought out, goal-driven workflow processes. How every company works, creates and collaborates is unique. So it pays to take the time to map out how it makes the most sense for your mobile workforce to engage. This is your starting point for identifying what apps, tools and hardware will get you where you want to be.

Don’t forget about the cultural impact a digital transformation like this can have on some of your people. It’s likely some will be skeptical of just how effectively new ways of working remotely will benefit the team. Let them provide feedback and input as you develop your strategies. Let them narrate the different potential outcomes of what might now be possible given these new tools and processes (e.g. working remotely).

Let us help

Providing customised solutions for unique customer requirements is what we do best. We help you create the right workflow processes supported by the best-fit collaboration tools for sharing rich content and information in the most engaging and meaningful ways possible. Our industry leading devices, software and managed services will help you create a mobile workforce that’s collaborative, connected and productive.