Cloud technology has changed the world we live in. Now, files stored in the cloud are accessible anywhere you have an internet connection. But is collaboration around these files secure?

Applications hosted on cloud technology can run on any web browser, and most are accessible through a variety of devices – smart phones, tablets, and the more traditional desktop computers and laptops.

This increased accessibility means greater convenience and mobility. Business travellers can perform a day’s work miles away from their desks. Documents can be viewed without requiring a PDF viewer or a word processing program. And, with files more easily accessible, collaboration is also easier.

So, what’s the downside? As with online information sharing, storing and accessing files in the cloud raises some security concerns – one of which is confidentiality.

Of course, with the nature of business files, privacy needs to be carefully considered. On the other hand, documents should not be protected to the point that file access to the right people is restricted. 

So, how can you strike the right balance to ensure your staff are collaborating around hosted files securely?

A good online collaboration application should strike the balance for you. First of all, it should enable easy file uploading and retrieving. Users should be allowed to create groups to conduct private conversations, as well as add or remove contacts to and from groups easily. It should also ensure security by implementing a secure socket layer (SSL) encryption.

Built as a high level online collaboration application, CORUS enables easy file access, maintains secure logins, and ensures confidentiality of documents by allowing you to grant access to certain people and not others – guaranteeing secure collaboration in the cloud.

A Successful Inside, Supports a Successful Outside

Most successful organizations have a pretty good idea of what really makes them successful, and its not the consumers who buy their products and services. Its the people inside who work daily to bring innovative ideas to life and work with consumers to resolve issues. So it makes sense that the need to supply employees with better tools and practices is a top priority for 2011.

via Enterprise Collaboration Tops List of 2011 Organizational Priorities.

Employee Engagement

A Leading Indicator of Financial Performance

The worlds top-performing organizations understand that employee engagement is a force that drives performance outcomes. In the best organizations, engagement is more than a human resources initiative — it is a strategic foundation for the way they do business.

Research by Gallup and others shows that engaged employees are more productive. They are more profitable, more customer-focused, safer, and more likely to withstand temptations to leave. The best-performing companies know that an employee engagement improvement strategy linked to the achievement of corporate goals will help them win in the marketplace.

via Employee Engagement.

80% of email users with SharePoint access continue emailing documents back and forth, instead of sending document links and using library services for check in, check out, and version control.   This is consistent with the overall population of email users surveyed.  83% of email users prefer to email documents back and forth, instead of uploading the document on a public folder, shared drive, or workspace.

As the internet influences more and more of our lives, employers are turning to online project collaboration tools to bring their employees together. Online tools allow employees to work from home while still contributing to their project of choice. These tools also allow employers to keep track of what everyone else is doing. The project manager can create a complete outline for the project, assign tasks, create deadlines, and keep track of everything to make sure the project gets completed on time. This is a huge leap forward. In the past, collaboration required lots of emails back and forth to make sure everyone was on the same page. These days, you can do it all online.

via Online Project Collaboration – Work More Efficiently With Online Tools.

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This is the first in a series of posts focused on our customers. They share with us how they use CORUS in their business.

Introducing Guy, an architect who uses CORUS to run his ever expanding business.

Guy manages 4 contractors and 11 builders who do maintenance and repair work for the public housing sector. We sat down with Guy and he explained to us the nature of his business and the tasks involved. Principally, how he relies on technology to run his business.

In his 30 years of business practice the workplace in the past decade, has gone totally digital. Armed with an iPhone, an iPad and a laptop computer Guy’s business is run without an “actual” office.

Welcome to the office of 2010!

Frankly we were blown away by the complexity of tasks Guy manages, all from within CORUS.

Guy’s core team, he refers to as soldiers, work in the field viewing and assessing the work done by the 11 builders he has contracted. He mentions that his “soldiers” are his “eyes” as they work between locations, constantly receiving, updating and communicating relevant information to other stakeholders. Building reports, photos of repairs, plans, instructions, contract are all handled within CORUS neatly filed in separate topics.

The idea of dealing with government departments sends shudders down most people spines yet Guy shares with us his secret sauce – accurate and timely communications.

“I’m a visual person”, Guy states. “I’m working with a management tool (CORUS) where everything is in one place, all the communications, along with plans, images and contractual agreements are right in front of me to see”.

Guy shared his experience with technology. “Nowdays, I don’t do anything that’s not on a computer”. He described how he used to set aside each Friday and some weekend time to plan the week’s work in advance. With CORUS this can now be done in one hour. Using technologies like CORUS and the internet have given Guy the ability to take on, “ten times more projects than possible a decade ago”.

Guy continually stressed the time saving elements of CORUS during our discussion. The ease of communicating and sharing files with his team is a key factor of his CORUS experience. He stressed how easy it was collaborating with a variety of people spanning government employees through to tradespeople.

CORUS offers Guy the opportunity to achieve more, in less time, whilst offering a greater level of functionality, than other platforms. He noted he has tried many solutions like Google Groups and MicroSoft Project but none of them give him a “birds eye view” of every job he is running.

Guy never once mentioned how “time poor” he was. His ruthless focus on finding and applying tools to make his business more time efficient is testimony to that. When discussing the gamut of his projects with friends and colleagues who ask, “How well do you sleep?”, he responds, “I sleep well. I am calm, relaxed………and in control!”.

At CORUS we love hearing stories like Guy’s.

If wondering what the fuss is about. Jump in, try our free demo trial.

You’ll be up and running in under a minute.

We’d love to hear your success stories too. Contact us.

Some great insights and a link to a PDF white paper from The Strategy Group

The adoption of collaboration tools tools can help organizations achieve performance gains and returns because they can enhance the value that an increasing number of individuals, collaborating across a network, bring to business-critical processes. In those that involve many-to-many interactions, such as innovation and new product development, sales, and customer acquisition, the return on collaboration is highest, as the greatest numbers of people are working toward a common goal (e.g., creating a new product). In processes involving few- to- many interactions, such as corporate reputation and shareholder value maintenance, advanced collaboration tools tend to have a more muted impact, due to a correspondingly lower number of connected individuals involved in these areas. At a basic, functional level, line-of-business managers believe that advanced collaboration tools help them to do critical tasks faster, more effectively, and at a lower cost than when these tools are not used.

via Does Collaboration Really Add Value? « The Strategy Group.