Working with another company on a project can pay dividends. But how do you make sure everything runs smoothly when working in multi-company groups? Having team collaboration tools that integrate with each other can help. Here’s how.

Differences in culture, job roles and ways of working can all bring challenges when working with different companies or in multi-disciplinary teams.

And if collaboration, knowledge-sharing and document storage systems won’t work together, it puts another stumbling block in the way of a multi-company team successfully fulfilling its tasks.

Even when they’re working with a different organization, people are no longer content to learn and negotiate a multitude of unfamiliar applications just to get the job done. Instead, they expect the same smooth, easy technological communication they enjoy in their personal lives to be available at work.

That’s why, when choosing your collaboration tools, it’s vital to find tools that will work seamlessly with other enterprise applications to provide:

An integrated mobile experience

With employees spread across company locations, working from home and working on the move, information needs to be readily available in one place, wherever and whenever people want to access it. Mobile first is the way to go when you’re choosing your collaboration tools.

Effective communication and collaboration

Using Multi-Company Groups in Workplace allows teams to share knowledge and work on projects with external teams, partners, suppliers, and customers in a secure space. And because you choose the level of access that people have to the group and what you want to share, you retain control of who knows what.

A collaborative way of storing, sharing and accessing documents:

Easy access to documents without the frustration of having to log in to multiple systems is crucial to efficient team workflow.

Multi-company groups come with easy document sharing and threaded comments so everyone – whichever company they are part of – can stay up to date.

Workplace makes it simple for members of multi-company groups to work on documents together. You can set up a team group, then attach links to folders from storage tools like Box, Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive and share them with your colleagues.

People can then comment and edit in real-time which is quicker and more efficient than asking people to provide individual feedback.

Easy discussion and collaboration

Having to wait for answers to questions, then repeating those same answers wastes time. Using Workplace integrations with other business tools can make teams more productive.

The integration with Jira Cloud, for example, enables group members to share and discuss Jira tasks. Teams can read and answer comments on the resolution of the task directly in the Workplace group which means people waste less time switching between tools.

Make the most of insights and feedback

Feedback from participants can help you maximize learnings from your multi-company projects. The Workplace integration with Survey Monkey, for example, allows you to gather insights and share them across your organization with ease.

Simplified processes

Accessing information about everyday matters like time off may not be very exciting, but it’s vital to team organization. The right tools can help you streamline these routine but important processes. Workplace integrates with a range of Human Capital Management and payroll software to make it easy for employees to find what they need.

Understanding the organization and team roles

Other organizations – and sometimes even the set-up of teams in different parts of the same business – can be a mystery to outsiders. Using Org chart in Workplace gives team members an instant overview of who does what.

And in doing so it gives teams even more abilities to overcome the challenges of cross-company collaboration.