Why Is Collaboration In Business Stronger than Competition?

Competition is the core part of humanity as we compete with our siblings, coworkers, teammates, peers for better jobs or promotions. You know competition makes us stronger, better, and faster. However, within an organization, competition will be a waste of time, resources, and effort.

Our competitive nature and hunger to distinguish ourselves from others prevent us from shaking hands with our competitors. But collaboration with competitors has become a fashion in business. Almost all profitable businesses operate under the principle of partnership.

Whether you own a small or large business, collaboration is the primary driving force behind continuous success. Effective collaboration and better teamwork lay the foundation of superior business in which employee serves the customers meaningfully.

Well, collaboration may not be easier for you. But with time, it can get your business to a better innovative position.

Let’s take a glimpse of the virtues of collaboration in business!

1.              Collaboration Reduces the Barriers to Productivity & Business Growth:

Your business success depends upon how your team members work with each other. The collaborative competition enables you to do your tasks & projects within weeks rather than months. The team member contributes their unique and novel ideas to execute the work. From these multiple functional ideas, you can find a solution to your business problems.

For instance, if you have a sales organization, the collaboration between your sales team, customer service team, and senior management is crucial to understand customers’ preferences. Similarly, your cooperation with your competitors will untapped the talent by improving internal and external communication.

2.              Collaboration Encourages the Culture of Ongoing Learning:

With collaboration, you can open new opportunities for the growth of your business. A room for collaboration will allow your employee to enhance their abilities and capacities to touch new horizons.

Typically, in a collaborative environment, an employee works without fear & favor. They share their ideas, solutions, knowledge, and skills with other members. Moreover, workplace collaboration allows the coworkers to focus on their abilities to handle a particular work. People think and communicate with clarity to be more productive for business growth.

Effective collaboration not only builds trust but it allows individuals to explore, refine, and test new ideas. Additionally, teamwork enables employees to rely on each other and work unanimously.

3.              Collaboration Encourages Creative & Orignal Thinking:

Generally, in poor communication and lack of collaboration, several employees cannot showcase their abilities. However, cooperation allows you to empower your workers to play their role in your business’s future. Better communication will enable them to uncover their contribution to ongoing projects.

A well-executed collaboration comes up with specialties, teams, and opinions to solve the problem within minutes. Also, the employees bring creative ideas to boost the business. You can not underestimate the value and benefits of a collaborative environment where all the employees focus on being more productive and effective with their innovative ideas.

4.              Collaboration Moves Business Effectively Towards Its Goals:

Promote the foster creativity of your business with a collaborative environment!

True collaboration leads your business effectively by better communications skills, creative ideas, consistent workflow, partnership, and learning. If you want to exceed your business beyond expectation, think about collaboration. The collaboration will allow you to access data, analytics, business, trends, and new sale opportunities that will boom your business.

When you know your competitors’ next move, you can use this edge against them and other market competitors. You and your competitors fight against the same customers, market, revenue shares, and profit, so you can work collaboratively for these goals.

Collaboration Technology:

After reading the benefits of collaboration for your business, you might be thinking of a partnership with your competitors. There are plenty of collaboration tools that have changed the entire workplace. You might have heard about cloud technology that has become a permanent feature of the workplace.

Various online tools help businesses to reinforce with their employees and competitors. These tools can eliminate the physical barriers of assembling data and enhance business growth.

Some of the productive cloud technologies that can serve you from email to project include:

·                  Outlook

·                  Office 365

·                  Yammer

·                  Sharepoint

·                  Skype

·                  Teams

·                  One drive

Microsoft allows all businesses to communicate and connect with their employees and other people from any office. Office 365 enables an employee to participate in projects from any device and geographical location.

All these tools not only encourage better knowledge but also improves the speed and effectiveness of employees. By choosing the right tool, you can handle your online meeting with foreign clients, team chats, task sharing, and more effectively. It will reshape your whole business and lead it to better results and productivity.

Reasons to Collaborate with Your Competitors:

Your business might be a zero-sum game for you. Sometimes you made a sale and your competitor lost. On the other hand, your competitor made a sale & land a customer, and you lost. Why are you not considering an elegant move – co-opetition?

Let’s discuss the mutual benefits & reasons for teamwork!

·                  Create a virtual enterprise

·                  Look for a niche-specific partnership

·                  Think beyond limits

·                  Seek complementary partnership

·                  Create economics of sales

·                  Cross-up sells

·                  Improved division of work

·                  Reduced costs & cycle time

·                  Staff camaraderie

The Bottom Line:

You can entail a give & take relationship by teamwork. With the well-experienced and creative team members, you can cover the area of your weakness to lead in the business marketplace. The data collected by your competitors proves beneficial for the growth of your business. With the exchange of valuable information, you can bring innovative products to the market. Moreover, you can utilize this information to build your effective email campaign and more.

If you are considering partnering with your competitor, you can take ideas from the previously collaborated businesses. For instance, Amazon collaborated with Amazon Marketplace, well-known as Fulfilled By Amazon – FBA. Amazon justifies the best partnership relation in this regard.

When collaborating with your competitor, be sure to weigh the risks and benefits of the partnership.