In recent years, demand for collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom has skyrocketed. Even before the pandemic, companies were leveraging the latest technology to help synchronize their teams and increase performance.

Now, business leaders are more reliant on these tools than ever before, as they need to bridge the gaps between hybrid, remote, and in-office employees. Mobile voice, chat, and video conferencing are taking over business communications, as employees continue the transition to age of “anywhere work”.

The good news is that implementing collaboration platforms correctly can pay huge dividends. One Forrester report found Microsoft Teams has a potential ROI of 832%, thanks to improved productivity and efficiency, among other factors. The bad news is many companies are still struggling to unlock the true ROI of their collaboration tools for one significant reason: compliance.

How Compliance Issues Impact Collaboration ROI

As the technology we use to communicate and collaborate has evolved, regulations outlining how data should be stored, transmitted, and shared have changed too.

Regulated industries are facing new challenges with compliance as capturing and managing unified communications across a range of platforms becomes more complex. The issue has even led to numerous companies putting the brakes on their digital transformation efforts.

For compliance teams, tracing the context and flow of conversations carrying over messaging platforms to voice calls, and video conferences is often overwhelming. This has led some organizations to try and minimize risk by turning off the collaboration features they desperately need.

One Theta Lake survey found 68% of companies are restricting collaboration features just to reduce the risk involved in accessing new channels. On the one hand, this strategy seems to make sense as regulatory fines increase in size and severity. However, turning off collaboration features leads to unintended negative consequences too.

Not only do companies risk the rise of shadow IT, as employees start turning to unmonitored channels for communication, but the ROI of an organization’s collaboration tools is drastically reduced. Companies end up falling behind their competitors by failing to leverage new, valuable communication channels that actively improve productivity and efficiency.

Using Compliance Solutions to Boost Collaboration ROI

As tempting as it might be to attempt to simply avoid compliance concerns entirely, the results of such an action are often more negative than positive. As collaboration tools become more essential in the modern workplace, lack of access to crucial features hampers business growth.

Fortunately, there is an alternative, industry leaders in communications compliance are delivering modular, turnkey solutions specially designed for collaboration platforms. These solutions can integrate directly with Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx, Zoom, RingCentral, and countless other UCaaS systems.

With the right compliance solution, companies can build on the existing security and privacy features included in their collaboration platforms, with powerful eDiscovery, archiving, and capture tools. Modern compliance technology can collect information from every conversation, whether it’s a chat on a Teams channel, a video conference, or a phone call.

This means firms can confidently support their employees in using features that enhance their productivity, such as digital whiteboards, screensharing sessions, video, and chat. They can allow employees to take full advantage of every feature within their collaboration platform, knowing all contextual information will be captured, and securely stored.

The Benefits of Compliance Tools for Collaboration

Now that global economic challenges are causing even more issues for firms, it’s more important than ever for organizations to ensure they’re getting the most value out of every investment. This means ensuring every member of a team can leverage the full suite of tools available to them, rather than just turning functionality off for compliance purposes.

Empowering employees to collaborate securely on their collaboration platform of choice enhances productivity. It prevents team members from having to use multiple different communication tools just for compliance purposes. Plus, it ensures companies can access a comprehensive audit trail, without increasing their risk of shadow IT.

Deploying modern compliance technology ensures companies and their teams can take full advantage of all the features they pay for in their collaboration suite, without compromising on safety. Not only does this improve productivity for team members, it also:

Reduces strain for compliance teams

Effective compliance tools for collaboration platforms can leverage automation and AI to help compliance teams review vast volumes of information quickly and efficiently. They transform the review process by allowing users to view communications in their native format, with access to complete contextual cues and content components.

Companies can rapidly pinpoint where breaches occur, saving reviewers hours of wasted time. Plus, the right compliance tools ensure companies can maintain complete visibility into their end-to-end communication stack, without having to rely on multiple distributed tools.

Delivers cost and time savings

Compliance software integrated with your collaboration solution doesn’t just protect your team members and improve their productivity by allowing them to utilize advanced tools. It can also save companies both time and money. Employees save time by using the same collaboration platform for every conversation, minimizing app overwhelm.

At the same time, intuitive solutions can help businesses to reduce their risk of having to pay high fines or deal with extensive downtime because of a compliance problem. The cost of a compliance platform is far lower than the price of paying for a compliance breach.

Allows for innovation

Implementing a compliance solution into your collaboration platform also ensures you can stay one step ahead of the curve as the landscape continues to evolve. As communications grow more complex, and new AI solutions and innovations enter the marketplace, companies will need to continue digitally transforming at a rapid pace.

Regulations may become tighter in the years ahead, but companies can’t afford to simply miss out on innovation to protect compliance. The right compliance solution will ensure organizations can continue to keep pace with the changing world, without putting teams and data at risk.

Collaboration and Compliance: Working in Synergy

Making the most of your collaboration platform in the modern world doesn’t have to mean compromising on compliance. Innovative vendors like Theta Lake empower businesses to invest fully in digital transformation, while protecting workflows and data.

With intuitive AI and automation tools, companies can manage huge and growing amounts of content in the communication landscape quickly and easily. This ensures every organization can realize the full ROI of a collaboration-first workplace.

Devin Redmond, CEO and Co-Founder of Theta Lake, says: “Our mission includes delivering communication compliance technology that understands, underpins, and improves end user safety, consumer protection, and data protection in line with regulatory compliance and data privacy oversight during the use of unified communications.

Our goal is to unleash the productivity that UC is capable of delivering with compliance being an enabler, rather than an inhibitor of creativity and workplace engagement.”



from UC Today https://ift.tt/6REQ3GI