The evolution of collaboration: Asana, Dropbox, and Slack weigh in on 3 ways work is changing

In 2018, millions of teams worldwide are using tools like Asana, Dropbox, and Slack to do work and drive impact, and have changed the way teams collaborate. But even a decade ago, this wasn’t the case. So we partnered with the experts at Dropbox and Slack on a webinar to assess the state of collaboration today, where it’s been, and where it’s going.

These insights from the webinar can help decision-makers understand the collaboration market so they know they’re making the right investment for their organizations now and in the future.

Watch the webinar, and learn about the evolution of collaboration, and how you can start improving team collaboration.

Here are our top three takeaways:

1. Leaders in the collaboration market have emerged

The collaboration market is saturated, with more players entering daily. This presents a challenge for organizations to determine the right tools for their teams. Luckily, leaders have emerged across three main categories of collaboration: content, communication, and coordination. Tools like Asana, Dropbox, and Slack are making the choice much easier by:

• Offering a product that gives teams and individuals the functionality they want, without unnecessary complexity and rigidity

• Meeting the requirements of IT and software decision-makers to ensure they’re selecting a secure tool they can rely on

• Integrating well with each other for a seamless and efficient experience

2. Individuals can influence the tools used at work

Previously, teams relied on IT departments or top-down approaches to choose and roll-out software. But as consumers began to use software and hardware in their personal life, this translated into demands for tools that were easy to use, modern, and catered to their needs for the workplace.

Now teams and individuals have more power to try and buy software that mirrors the ease and appearance of tools and apps they use outside of work. It’s up to IT buyers and software decision-makers to give employees the team collaboration tools they need and help them integrate these tools to get the most value.

3. Integrating collaboration tools makes teamwork efficient (and delightful)

One of the major obstacles to team collaboration today is “tool fatigue” which can happen if teams don’t standardize around tools and how to use them. Often they resort back to email and spreadsheets. But when teams look to the leading collaboration tools, they can find fuller feature sets that deliver the ease of use and flexibility needed to satisfy a broad range of use cases—instead of relying on a specialized tool for every function.

Where the top tools really start to shine is in how they integrate together for a seamless experience for less context switching and more efficiency. An idea coming from a Slack channel discussion can get turned into an Asana task, where they can attach working files from Dropbox Paper—and that’s just one of many examples.

By leveraging the top tools in each category together, teams can combine the powers of each tool’s unique strengths while moving seamlessly between them. That means purchasing fewer tools overall and getting more value from the tools you do buy.

Want to see it in action?

Now that you’re caught up on the state of collaboration, you can see it in action in our webinar demo. If you’re already an Asana user, you can try out our Dropbox, Slack, or other integrations today!

The future of collaboration matters because it’s already here. Teams and software decision makers need to trust that where they invest now will pay off in the short and long term. Leaders in this space like Asana, Dropbox, and Slack are working hard to ensure their tools are best in breed for our categories, and also that we work well with each other to give customers the seamless experience they expect, while meeting the needs.