The COVID-19 pandemic undeniably is having an impact in all kind of business, especially forcing businesses around the world to switch to remote work and move the operation and its employee online. Therefore, technologies that help business and employee to work remotely became the centre of everyone’s attention.

Collaboration Software

What is Collaboration Software?

Collaboration software is aimed to help businesses to maintain communication continuity and streamlined teamwork through sharing, processing, and management of files, documents and other data types among several users or systems. Due to the outbreak of covid-19, most of the employee is working from home in order to keep the business running and these technologies are here to help everyone.

For meetings purpose, software like Zoom, GoToMeeting, Cisco’s Webex, Microsoft Teams is widely known software.

Furthermore, chat tools like Slack, Chanty, WhatsApp, and Workplace by Facebook can easily improve the communications and collaboration between the customers, employee, and employer.

In Addition, as for IT company where programming is involved, GitHub is a very good choice as it is open-source, meaning it’s free to use, share, and modify. Github makes it easier for individuals and teams for version control,  it helps teams to keep track and manage changes to a software project’s code by uploading code file online.

According to TrustRadius, collaboration software that has the most number of pageviews is Microsoft Teams, following with Skype, Slack, Google Drive, Monday.com, Wrike, Airtable, MS Sharepoint, Atlassian Confluence, and Trello. This statistics is collected during the outbreak of COVID-19 in many countries.

Benefits of Collaboration Software

Effective communication and collaboration

Collaboration software help teams to have timely communication and that is key when talking about effective project management. It can enhance communication among the project team using a visual project management tools that allows all teams member to easily see the progress of work, that is helpful for individual’s productivity because it helps team members to anticipate, prioritize and coordinate their work whilst working from home. Moreover, good communication helps project managers to manage stakeholder inquiries and expectations, keep the pace of the team forward and also ensure the coordination of contingencies and dependencies.

Meeting project timelines

Collaboration software like Kanban boards can help the employee and employer to understand the prioritization of work, where it will help the teams on time management and understand what to do today and tomorrow, and update can be viewed in real-time, so the project manager can easily adapt the project plan as new information becomes available.

Keep the project in budget

Collaboration software will help to keep the project in the budget as the project will be delivered on time, and some expenses like a hardcopy of the project or workspace rental fee can be reduced.

Most importantly, collaboration software can protect people by maintaining social distancing whilst at the same time maintain the continuity of work by effectively communicating, and at the same time, these technologies can help the business to cut the cost and prepare for recovery.

How to choose the suitable Collaboration Software

Consider business challenges with the software features

The business challenges are very important to be considered as different software are able to solve the different challenge, the features that a software offer might be different from others. For example, as for meeting software, HD quality of audio and video, share screen features and request control features are some must-have features.

Include user opinion

The collaboration software is not only for one person, it is mainly for a group of people or a team, therefore it is important to gain opinion from all user including employer, employee, even the customer. Moreover, the tools should be easy to learn and use as not, an easy-to-use application can save many learning hours.

Consider the secureness of software

One of the major concerns for people who are new to online business is the secureness of online nowadays as there are many hackers around the world trying to get business data or information. Great collaboration tools must ensure their user data is protected well. Companies like Microsoft or Google collaboration product can be taken into consideration as these are one of the biggest companies in the world, and they have an excellent reputation.

Consider the cost of software

Collaboration software has free and also needed a charge, therefore considering the budget is quite important as well. Businesses will keep on evolving, a collaboration tool has to be able to adapt to the evolving business needs. Most likely, tools that needed a subscription fee will be more secure and with more features, therefore business has to consider whether these features with subscriptions plan will be able to make the business better or it is just unnecessary costs.

Webinar

What is Webinar?

A webinar is a combination of the word “web” and “seminar”. A webinar is an event held online, and there will be the only online audience. Usually, these online events are interactive, business-related and allow the user to share your insight or knowledge with virtually everyone in the world. Webinar Software including Demio, WebinarNinja, JetWebinar, WebEx, and ClickMeeting is famous and up-to-date software for hosting a webinar nowadays.

According to Statista, there are 49% of marketers are replacing some live events with the webinar, 19% replace most live events with the webinar, 16% are not sure what to do, and 16% has no plan to do a webinar. As the statistics have shown, many marketers still believe that webinar is very helpful during the covid-19 pandemic.

Benefits of using Webinar

Build brand awareness

People around the world can easily understand your brand through the webinar online instead of attending a physical event where people are required to travel, and travelling during COVID-19 is not advisable. Furthermore, some webinars will have a recording that allows the audience to re-watch the webinar again and it will help with sharing the webinars with other people who have missed it.

Cost-efficient

A virtual event will help business in cutting expenses such as venue fee, furniture rental, salary for hiring event staff like ushers, security, catering, travel and travel and lodging fee for speakers, these expenses can be avoided.

Discover potential customers

Hosting a webinar will help to build a list, this list will contain every registered person personal information such as email or contact number. The information will store in your database and possibly the business can take into consideration that these are the potential customers and promote them the new product in the future.

How to Host a Webinar?

Select the right webinar platform

All Webinar Platform has it’s own pro’s and con’s, and different platform might have different features. Comparing different platforms with their review from the user and the features they offered will make it easier in selecting the correct platform for your webinar.

Select the right webinar format

Before starting a webinar, it is important to select one right webinar based on the topic chosen, as webinar has lots of different format such as is the webinar a pre-recorded or it is a live session or is it going to be an interview Q&A-style webinar.

Select the right timing

Hosting Webinar is very important to choose the right timing to do it, the business has to identify the target audience the and target location as different people would have different working hours and different time zone, therefore selecting a proper timing to host the webinar is very important.

Money Transfer Platforms

Money Transfer Platforms are very commonly used longs ago, but due to the outbreak of covid-19, people have to stay at home and that means at the same time people can only purchase stuff digitally. Furthermore, to avoid physical contact during this crisis, cash is no longer the king. Most commonly known money transfer platforms including Western Union, PayPal or Bank.

According to Statista, PayPal active user has about 280 million active users in 2019, whilst in 2020 the active user of PayPal has increased to about 350 million users, that’s how much people in the world is relying on money transfer platform during Covid-19 pandemic.

Benefits of using Money Transfer Platforms

Easier money transaction

As the covid-19 pandemic are forcing peoples to stay at home, therefore the only way to purchase stuff are through online and delivering, and some of the money transfer platforms have no longer support cash on delivery, first is to avoid the physical contact between cash to cash, another issue is to avoid the cancellation from the customer site. Moreover, the employer can pay for employee salaries without having to deliver the salaries physically to them.

Increase sales of  business

Money Transfer Platforms are very easy to use, therefore if a business offers its consumer to pay using money transfer platforms, customer will likely make a purchase in a second, most customer like convenient payment method.

Records of transaction

Unlike cash, money transfer platforms will keep all the transaction in details, for both receiver and deliver, therefore it is easy to access to payment information, this helps to avoid ambiguity and confusing while tracking payments.

How to choose the right Money Transfer Platform

Security measures

The first important thing to consider when it comes to cash and transaction definitely will be the security measure. Money transfer platform must be able to secure its user data and information, most importantly the transaction and balance. Reading software review from the user can prevent that from happening, their review will mention whether is good or safe to use the platform to transfer your money or not.

Transfer fee

Some money transfer platform will charge for a transaction fee depending on the amount transferring, comparing various platform on their transaction fee can help to reduce a lot of expenses, and for some country, the service charge will be different as well.

Customer service

Money Transfer services are carried out online and it’s difficult to have in-time assistance if something goes wrong. It’s good to know that you can get hold of someone on the other end of the line in case of emergency. This is why you need outstanding customer service. Check out their call-in-life before committing yourself to a specific platform, and evaluate the time it took to get a real person on the phone and then rate how good the customer service experience was.

People all around the world have been affected by the COVID-19, especially for business and businesspeople. Therefore, the pandemic has also given a great opportunity for traditional businesses to dive into the digital world. The world is definitely going to rely on technology more in the future, so it’s better to turn this pandemic into opportunity by start learning how to operate your business with the technology mentioned above.