The growth of collaboration and the role of speech to text

The modern workplace has changed dramatically, driven in particular by the growth of hybrid working. This is where an individual, or team work part of their time at the workplace and part remotely. And the focus is firmly on collaboration.

Gartner, the influential technology research company, has identified four modes of collaboration in this new hybrid world:

• Working together from the same place (co-located and synchronous): teams are in one location and participate physically in common meetings.
• Working together from different places (distributed and synchronous): team members work remotely and participate virtually in common meetings.
• Working alone from the same place (co-located and asynchronous): team members work individually towards the common goals but share the same office space.
• Working alone from different places (distributed and asynchronous): team members work individually towards the common goals from their distributed locations.

Collaboration can take the form of authoring documents together, communicating more effectively with each other, or contributing to project activities and underpinning these activities is the effective use of collaboration tools and supporting technology.

Using appropriate collaboration tools allows remote teams to communicate more efficiently. They also facilitate teamwork and team cohesion, which in turn leads to greater productivity by enabling colleagues or external partners, wherever they are, to share their work in a simple and efficient way.

Key collaboration opportunities and benefits

Collaboration comes in many forms and there are a wide range of supporting technologies available. The main ways in which you can use online tools to collaborate more effectively with your employees, business partners and customers are:

• File sharing - there are a number of solutions that can make it easy to share content with potential collaborators or work on documents with other people at the same time. The key consideration for many businesses is how to integrate platforms that manage documents with their existing IT systems.
• Project management – tools are available to co-ordinate project management and resource management, often offering new ways to develop projects with external collaborators.
• Communication - probably the collaboration type most regularly used, since effective communication can help us at every stage of the collaboration lifecycle, from meeting and getting to know people to working on projects together. Solutions include not only emails and voice conversations but also whiteboards, video chats and online conferencing.

The practical benefits of effective collaboration at a general level include flexibility - colleagues in different regions or even countries can easily work together on the same project, helping businesses to put together the best possible team for a project, regardless of the location of the employees. Another significant benefit is greater efficiency - collaboration tools can offer more efficient ways to work together on projects and services. It’s easier to quickly set up virtual teams, join up remote teams, or manage complex projects with different participants. And of course, there’s also the potential for improved project management – collaboration tools have a variety of project tracking capabilities that make it easy for team members to contribute to a project wherever their location.

The role of speech to text systems

For most organisations, the production of accurate and timely documents is a key requirement, so anything that allows authors to produce these more effectively and gather inputs from colleagues is going to play a major role.

That is why speech to text systems are contributing to enhanced collaboration in a variety of organisations and sectors. For example, a cloud-based speech recognition solution can enable authors to dictate a variety of documents and send the resultant digital recordings through to support staff for follow-up work, irrespective of their location. And the working versions of documents can be accessed by the original author and other people whilst on the move to allow for instant updating, editing and approval.

And by integrating digital dictation software with workflow software a business can automate the entire document production cycle, from the initial voice recording right through to the final sign-off of the document. Further integration is also possible with Microsoft 365 to allow for an even more streamlined workflow.

Summary

As the uptake of the hybrid working model increases, so the demand for collaboratively creating, editing, verifying and approving documents also grows. And speech to text systems are ideally placed to play an integral part in such developments.

Take a look at our speech to text service