Newfound accountability: Productivity software supports global team managers, members
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 7/30/2008 12:00:00 PM
A newly released survey from Institute for Corporate Productivity says 59 percent of organizations polled are placing greater emphasis on improving employee productivity and efficiency. More than 60 percent of respondents identified software as the preferred tool to track productivity in their offices.
Now, as managers struggle to hold remote team members accountable as well, TeamLeader software, offered by Virtual Global comprises a Web-based solution for governing globally dispersed teams and increasing productivity. And while TeamLeader was engineered to help companies closely monitor contractors and offshore-outsourced work, it’s also well-suited for managers of telecommuting teams, or those who want to keep a closer eye on their in-house activities and onsite teams.
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-ready solution gives managers an easier way to manage large teams and complex tasks, while boosting employee productivity, interactivity, and efficiency. Using TeamLeader, managers can assign work, and report on who’s doing what—including what is on-time or late, and any approaching deadlines. The solution puts managers in closer touch with their teams, even if they are scattered around the world.
“The needs of managers have been grossly overlooked in this whole collaborative movement,” says Cary Landis, CEO, Virtual Global. “Most collaboration suites offer little or nothing for managers who still use email as their main productivity tool. Email was never intended for productivity. In reality, it’s usually quite the opposite.”
With TeamLeader, managers can shift priorities, report on late tasks, reassign tasks, and manage daily issues. They can even graph team member performance trends using the Team Intelligence reporting component.
Although TeamLeader is not promoted as a collaboration offering, it is delivered with a tightly integrated collaborative suite. Managers and team members alike can use the task calendars, chat in real time, view remote desktops, organize documents, and send mail. As team members work, they create a rich performance knowledgebase that is readily available to managers for reporting.
Virtual Global’s collaboration strategy incorporates an open platform. Developers can use TeamLeader’s Plugin Development Kit to build custom components and integrate the system with in-house Web applications or third-party Web services.
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