Skip to main content
X

Send us a Topic or Tip

Have a suggestion for the blog? Perhaps a topic you'd like us to write about? If so, we'd love to hear from you! Fancy yourself a writer and have a tech tip, handy computer trick, or "how to" to share? Let us know what you'd like to contribute!

Thanks for reaching out!

5 Reasons Cloud Content Management Is the Ultimate Collaboration Solution

two laptops sharing data indicated by a cloud icon

Team collaboration is crucial but not always easy. When team members live in different time zones and working more from home, it’s difficult to connect in real-time. Even with the best collaboration tools, shooting emails and messages back and forth isn’t a good substitute for live collaboration. Without understanding the nuances, collaboration is challenging.

One of the biggest challenges teams face is staying organized. That’s where cloud content management comes into play.

1. Cloud content management is crucial for collaboration

Cloud collaboration tools can’t fix time zone issues, but they can keep teams organized no matter where team members reside. In fact, that’s exactly what they were designed to accomplish. However, collaboration tools are useless without content management. A team can’t collaborate if people can’t find the documents, media, and resources they need.

If you haven’t adopted cloud content management to support your team’s collaboration process, here are four good reasons to embrace it.

2. Cloud content management makes content searchable and sortable

Magnifying Glass Search

Simply storing content isn’t enough. A large amount of content is only useful when it’s searchable and sortable. Content management tools generally use tags to make content searchable. Say you have a video clip of a subject being interviewed on the news. You can apply numerous tags to that video that represent different categories people might use to search: broadcast date, the news station name, the interviewer’s name, the subject’s name, and even the subject matter of the interview.

If your content management tools don’t allow you to tag each piece of stored content, you can’t organize your content in a meaningful way. Cloud content management tools are designed to organize data so that every file can be easily found.

3. Cloud content management systems scale with your business

scalability arow increase box size

Cloud content management is scalable, which means your systems and tools will grow as your organization grows. With a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, you always have access to the latest updated versions of your preferred software without having to worry about downloading new releases and patches. All upgrades are installed automatically and delivered effortlessly.

Scalability in the cloud is crucial for organizations that manage sensitive data. For example, healthcare organizations spend a significant amount of time securing and protecting their data management tools; they can’t afford to migrate to new software just because they’ve outgrown their existing tools.

Bottom line: if you want data management that will grow with your organization, your tools need to be cloud-based. However, tools such as iCloud and Dropbox don’t necessarily offer organizations what they need to scale, nor do they have powerful workflow capabilities to keep business moving.

Box brings you secure collaboration, automated workflow, and content management (which includes extensive tagging, sorting, and organization capabilities) — everything teams need to get work done at scale. And with Box, it’s all possible on a single cloud content management platform.

4. Cloud content management tools are secure

Software isn’t inherently secure, so it’s important to find tools designed by professional software developers who take security seriously. You also need to do your part to keep your cloud content secure. For example, creating teams to use Google Drive is fantastic as long as you put security parameters in place so that nobody else can find your content on the web. If your content is defaulting to “anyone with a link can view,” that’s not secure. In addition, if your industry is subject to regulatory laws of any kind, you have to be careful how you store content that may contain sensitive information, personally identifying information, or intellectual property.

There’s nothing wrong with using Google Drive to collaborate, but don’t store sensitive information on Google Drive.

5. You can integrate cloud-based tools with desktop tools

xmind logo

Some cloud-based tools will directly and seamlessly integrate with desktop tools. Others won’t completely integrate but can still be used as part of the content management process. For example, XMind is a great brainstorming tool to collaborate on things like naming conventions for your files and folders.

If you’re not sure what content you want to upload, you can use Inboard to create a visual catalog of content and easily choose which pieces should be uploaded to your cloud storage account. This method beats opening each file individually to figure out where it goes.


Effective cloud collaboration requires cloud content management

At the end of the day, if your content isn’t securely stored and highly organized, your team will struggle. Easy access to files via cloud content management greatly enhances a team’s ability to collaborate, which ultimately benefits the company.


Anna Johansson
the authorAnna Johansson
Contributing Author
Anna is a freelance writer, researcher, and business consultant. A columnist for Entrepreneur.com, Earth911.com, and more, Anna specializes in entrepreneurship, technology, and social media trends.

Leave a Reply