Following on from the Why Collaborate? infographic, I’ve just posted on a different question – Why use collaboration tools?:

“… given the realities of business and organizational life today, the nature of collaboration has changed. For example:

• Decisions have to be made quickly, often based on input from many people working in different office and field locations.
• People have to interact regularly with the people they work alongside, only the “alongside” is separated by time zones, countries, and even continents.
• Problems have become more multi-dimensional, due to globally integrated supply chains, just-in-time manufacturing, global marketing, and workforce diversity.
• Expertise has become more fragmented, as the stock of knowledge expands rapidly. The half-life of information is shrinking. Two people who both trained as chemists (or engineers, or information scientists) are often unable to speak together in knowledgeable ways, because each has studied different aspects of a large discipline.

These business and organizational realities coalesce to mean that we frequently have to work with people with whom we are not physically collocated. And more than that, that we have to work with a broader and more diverse set of people than would happen without the above major trends.

Based on this, there are four reasons why we should use collaboration tools.“

Read more: Why Use Collaboration Tools?