Align Your Remote Team Quickly: Communication Tools and Digital Platforms

While workplaces have already been trending towards remote-friendly accommodations, it has become clear that every business needs a work-from-home contingency plan. When you’re accustomed to having your teams under the same roof, where a meeting is as simple as a short walk to the conference room, pivoting to a remote workflow can feel overwhelming.

Fortunately, there are plenty of communication tools and platforms available to help you align your remote team. Here are our top picks for remote alignment, and why they may be a good fit for you.

Project Management Tools

Great project management software makes it easy to set deadlines, assign tasks, collaborate as a team, and oversee operations. 

1. ClickUp: This cloud-based project management tool suits a wide variety of industries and is scalable for businesses of any size. Sub-tasks, action items, and comments can be assigned to individual team members, and projects can be easily monitored by coordinators. Your team members can easily view assignments and set alerts for deadlines. 

2. Trello: This software uses boards, lists and cards to organize and share information. For example, one card includes general information about a project. Another card acts as the inbox for questions related to the project. Other cards are based on the workflow, organizing tasks that are in progress, paused, ready to launch, or live.

3. Monday: This tool eliminates never-ending email chains and constant sync calls by automating routine project management tasks. Customizable “building blocks” help you manage time, communication, and moving parts in your projects. 

4. Asana: Process alignment is simplified with Asana, a platform with an emphasis on visualizing your workflows in helpful formats. Work request forms streamline the project intake process, and real-time calendars keep everyone on track to meet deadlines.

Sales and Marketing Tools

Even pre-pandemic, aligning marketing and sales teams posed a challenge. HubSpot is the ultimate choice to streamline your marketing and sales efforts. Here’s how to stay organized with a full-stack software solution:

• Coordinate your sales and marketing teams: By keeping leads in the same system from the moment they’re generated through the sale and beyond, you can ensure maximum transparency, trackability, and service level.

• CRM integration and segmentation: HubSpot allows for a smooth handoff from sales to marketing, creating more accurate segmentation and a more effective marketing strategy. 

• Email automation: With accurately segmented lists, creating and automating email marketing campaigns is an effective way to save time. Use email automation to reach your prospects, keep in touch with sold customers, and encourage repeat business.

• Content production: Create blogs, landing pages, ebooks, and more to attract leads to your digital marketing platforms and retain clients with valuable content offers.

• Social media publishing: Streamline your social media presence from one centralized platform

Communication Tools

It doesn’t take long to realize that email isn’t enough to meet your remote teams’ business communication needs. You’ll need video conferencing and screen sharing capabilities along with a messaging hub in your toolkit:

• Zoom and Skype: Both of these communication tools give you the ability to video chat and screen share between two or more people.

• Slack: What began as an instant messaging platform has expanded to include collaboration tools to help your team communicate seamlessly. You can organize workspaces and conversations to suit your needs, replacing email as the only method of written communication and file sharing.

• Microsoft Teams: Instant messaging, Microsoft file sharing (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc), and video conferencing are all integrated into this team collaboration tool. Microsoft Teams has an emphasis on privacy and security, making it a good choice for businesses dealing with sensitive information.

Time tracking and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

• Slab: Centralize handbooks, workflow documents, and other shared knowledge your team may need to access. Great organization and robust search-ability make Slab a great place to hold your resources. 

• Toggl: This tool allows your team to track their time spent on various projects, which can then be viewed through dynamic reporting capabilities. This helps you see what projects your team is spending the most time on, how much manpower is being spent on each client, and where there are opportunities to take on new tasks.

Empowering your remote teams with flexible, functional communication tools and task management software can ease the transition to a work-from-home structure and keep your output and client satisfaction stable. Like anything else in business, the key is to adapt and stay positive. We’re all in this together!