By Jay Ripton on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs
As more people continue to work from home, we’ve grown acclimatised to the idea and the tools that come with it. Online whiteboards are one tool that has yet to be established as a core tool.
Although online whiteboards aren’t automatically available in all digital workspaces, they offer tremendous benefits to people and teams which communicate often.
According to Mordor Intelligence, the online whiteboard market is set to increase at a CAGR of 18.36 per cent.
In this post, we’ll look at the significant benefits of online whiteboards and how they complement the best aspects of collaboration.
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Benefits of using online whiteboards
Virtual whiteboards provide components to the digital workspace that help teams collaborate more effectively. These characteristics revolve around people’s online accessibility, versatility, and engagement.
Versatility
Virtual whiteboards may use the flexibility of the internet to help teams diagram operations and find solutions. This means you can rapidly and efficiently switch between numerous complicated pieces.
You may access a collection of different templates that assist arrange your collaborative sessions using an online whiteboard. This allows you to access new and efficient thinking and brainstorming techniques that you would not be able to access otherwise.
Using online whiteboards also saves you the trouble of putting up boards and memorizing collaboration keys ahead of time. These features make it much easier to collaborate on any template or diagram so that they may be used more frequently in your everyday routine. This adaptability facilitates cooperation when working in a digital workspace and improves the overall connectivity of your workspace.
Engagement
Virtual whiteboards give templates and structure to your collaborative activities, making them more exciting and productive. Collaboration and brainstorming can be challenging in digital workspaces since there is no unified visual element that everyone can view simultaneously. Understanding one other and working together becomes considerably easier when individuals can interact in a visual medium together.
Virtual whiteboards arrange and organize their templates in ways that facilitate collaborative communication. People are more likely to communicate when they arrive at a pre-structured and aesthetically appealing template.
Accessibility
Accessibility is a critical parameter for people to connect with virtual whiteboards, and it adds great flexibility to the online work environment. Because virtual whiteboards may be used from anywhere and by anybody who has been accepted, they are far more adaptable than a typical collaborative platform. This means you can move your teams worldwide and include individuals and information from locations you wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
This provides online whiteboards a lot of flexibility regarding what activities they can complete and who you may add. This accessibility extends your digital workspace’s reach and allows you to incorporate more individuals than was previously feasible. You can not only work with these folks, but you can also cooperate with them.
You may not only move your jobs throughout the planet, but you can also alter the essential nature of your workstation. Virtual whiteboards can turn your collaboration, brainstorming, or organizing into a dynamic document. This may be accessed at any moment for increased input or learning potential, implying that it has a level of permanence that traditional approaches cannot match.
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Tips for using online whiteboards
Whiteboard applications are a flexible addition to the workplace, and as more people start to use them, it’s crucial to know basic techniques for getting the most out of your cooperation. Here are our five most crucial online whiteboard tips.
#1 – Establish specific expectations and goals
Setting clear goals and expectations, such as having frequent contact, can be forgotten when transferring cooperation online. Setting clear objectives and expectations for individuals to follow helps them comprehend the work at hand and helps align the thoughts and contributions of your team. When individuals have a familiar north star to direct them, they can collaborate much more effectively.
#2 – Consolidate understanding
No matter how complicated or easy they promise, online whiteboards and other collaborative tools will always have a learning curve. While you cannot remove the learning curve altogether, you can work hard to help your staff overcome it as quickly as possible.
One of the significant issues with online cooperation is a misunderstanding of how to use the resources at hand. This can waste time and produce poor outcomes if people cannot submit ideas efficiently owing to a lack of understanding of how to use the tools.
#3 – Make an open, collaborative environment
One of the most crucial impediments to good online collaboration is participant competitiveness, and some personalities may be unconstrained. This is a significant disadvantage of cooperation because it impairs the ability of the entire team to work together. This is not to argue that a substantial contribution is undesirable, but it can occasionally limit others’ capacity to participate and speak up effectively.
#4 – The structure should be integrated
Feeling confused or misdirected is a typical challenge for people who collaborate online, and it’s often caused by the difficulties of working without a shared visual framework. This is where online whiteboards shine since they provide many solutions.
Online whiteboards offer a variety of frameworks for you to use during your collaboration sessions, and they are all well-established boards for you to use. Whether it’s simple organizational tools or extensive market analysis, being able to rapidly pick and apply a standardized template helps coordinate and govern your team’s cooperation.
#5 – Integrate communication channels
Integrating communication technologies is critical for maintaining free and open communication while cooperating. Collaboration is strongly reliant on your team’s ability to communicate swiftly and constructively, which is why these tools are essential.
Because whiteboard apps may make contributions permanent and remotely available, ignoring these tools’ real-time uses might be tempting and making contributions asynchronously. These technologies work best in real-time, with your team interacting, so using these communication tools in tandem is critical.
Why online whiteboards are indispensable
Online whiteboards take the best aspects of conventional collaboration methods and expand on them to provide an indispensable tool for any digital office. They not only make straightforward use of the internet’s resources but also bring flexibility and creative possibilities to any collaborative environment. Look no farther than an established virtual whiteboard if you want to improve your workspace while working remotely.
Further reading
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Jay Ripton, Khareem Sudlow
