Communication is a crucial element to success for any business. But for businesses that has an OUTSOURCING operation or runs on virtual teams, communication is life or death. Virtual environments do not have the luxury of being in the same room or building as their co-workers, so the natural communication benefits from working in an office disappear. Poor communication can lead to lower quality, productivity and moral across the origination.

1. Top 5 Software Tools for Virtual Teams | Process Street
process.st /2014/08/virtual-team-software/
Vinay Patankar
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Communication is a crucial element to success for any business. But for a businesses that has an
OUTSOURCING operation or runs on virtual teams, communication is life or death. Virtual environments
do not have the luxury of being in the same room or building as their co-workers, so the natural
communication benefits from working in an office disappear.
Poor communication can lead to lower quality, productivity and moral across the origination.

2. Here are 5 tools that can get you and your team back on track and chatting up a storm.
1. Skype
http://skype.com
Skype is the default go-to IM for many business users. It’s free version, allows for chat, voice, video, group
chats and more. They did used to offer free screensharing but they took it out and now only offer it in the
premium version. Skype goes further than many of the other items of this list by, offering inbound phone
numbers and the ability to call phones around the world for very reasonable prices.
Skype is available on most devices too, although if you have a lot of conversations going on it can be a
battery and data drain.
The core Skype features are free for life and they also provide advanced features for business customers
starting at $10 per month, plus you will have to pay for a subscription or buy credits to call real phone
numbers.
2. Slack
http://www.slack.com
Slack is a powerful Instant Messenger platform designed around search, built for teams and companies. It
allows for group conversations across entire organizations, and teams, file sharing, SCREEN SHARING
, private conversations, @replies, embedded images, and a lot lot more.
Slack has a much deeper level of control than Skype, managing multiple private conversations, @replying
to people inside group chats, collaborating around screencasts and images. All of this made easily and
instantly searchable.
Slack also integrates with a huge number of other products which is really neat for setting up all sorts of
alerts.
If you want a IM platform to communicate across your whole team and organization, Slack is the way to go.
Slack is free for unlimited users except they only keep a 10,000 message searchable archive. If you want
to keep your message history prices start at $6.67 per user/month and go up pretty quickly for added
functionality.
3. Process Street
http://process.st
When running an outsourcing team, its very important to not just have open lines of communication, but
also to have clearly defined documentation so the whole operation knows its key objectives and how they
are supposed to get them done.
Process Street is a tool that allows you to create and manage standard operating procedures. Documents
are broken down by task and rich content such as images, videos and files can be added to each task.
This is great for showing screenshots, screencast videos, having links to login information or other
resources they may need to complete the job.

3. This kind of knowledge management is effective for training staff and managing quality across an
organization.
Documents in Process Street can also be spun off into checklists, which can be executed against. So you
can easily track the status of your outsourced team and know where they are at with their activities at any
point.
Process Street is free for teams of up to 3 people, the lowest plan is $30 for 10 users and it goes up from
there.
4. Asana
http://asana.com
Asana is a task management tool which touts communication without email. Teams work around
collaborative “to-do” lists, projects and workgroups. Tasks can be created, completed, commented on and
moved around projects. This is great for teams collaborating around projects and need to communicate
against many moving parts at once.
Asana makes it easy to get alerted of changes and see an overview of the teams activity with the inbox
feature. The audit trail is also handy so you can see exactly who made changes to a task when.
Asana’s pricing is also awesome, offering a free plan for teams under 15 people. The pricing structure
goes up pretty quickly from there.
If you’re not a fan of Asana’s ToDo list interface, check out competitors Trello and Basecamp. They
essentially do the same thing with a slightly different interface.
5. Google Hangouts
http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/
Google Hangouts is an excellent tool for video conferencing, meetings, brainstorming sessions and a
whole bunch more. It’s a powerful video conferencing platform that includes video, audio, chat and
screenshare with as many people as you want for free. Sessions can be recorded directly to YouTube to
view later or as record.
Google Hangouts also has great technology, automatically detecting who is talking and rotating the
cameras appropriately, group hangouts just feel nice. Hangouts can be done in private one-on-one
conversations or closed groups, but can also be created so they are open for anyone in the team, or even
anyone in the public to watch or join in.
There are hundreds of third party apps that make Google Hangouts even more powerful, such as
whiteboards, diagraming tools and more.
Google Hangouts is 100% fee and runs in your browser making it well positioned to become the default
go-to video conferencing solution for virtual teams and outsourcers.
And there you have it, get your team using more of these tools and you should see an improvement in
communication across the board.
But remember, its not just about the software. Correct training, processes and leadership are required to
have your team use these products effectively. Even the greatest tools will not help if nobody is using

4. them.
How do you communicate with your team?