Few things CTOs need to consider before choosing any team messaging app

Bhavin Turakhia

Disruption in technology is a never ending process, and it is likely to accelerate. Progressive business models have emerged and organizational structures have transformed on the back of technology. But interestingly, technology has a more profound impact on a CTO’s role, and the way he plans to revolutionize the work culture in his organization.

One noticeable change in a workplace is around how people collaborate. The latest in collaboration has gone beyond organizational boundaries, where people team up and disband on the go. Since real time, mobile and all encompassing collaboration is the main ask for teams across organizations, it also demands attention from the CTOs. This is because technology may have offered the resources for new kinds of teamwork; what remains is an innate transformational challenge.

Coming to enterprise messaging apps like Flock or HipChat, they are designed for real time and fast team collaboration. These platforms are not only chat applications, but loaded with powerful features making them richer in functionality. From product, design, marketing to IT teams, messaging platforms bring multiple collaborative solutions to the table. These new tools of collaboration are drastically different from our good old official mode of communication - emails. Thus, CTO’s role encompasses the task of comprehending the strength of these tools and breaking barriers of transformational challenges.

Moreover, we must realize that CTOs are focusing on transformative technology at all levels, thus they ought to be cautious and may have their own inhibitions when shifting to newer ways of collaboration (for obvious reasons).

So here’s what CTOs must consider while adopting team messaging solutions:

Data privacy

One major concern of the IT team is maintaining data privacy. Some sectors like the BFSI are not very comfortable sharing all kinds of information with teams. These industries are favorable to hosting data on premise rather than on cloud.

Team communication platforms provide a solution to this quandary. They allow restrictions on users from sharing particular file extensions. Available mostly in the admin panel, users can blacklist or whitelist other employees to send certain files. Moreover, many team messaging apps provide the alternative of hosting data on premise, much to many organisations’ delight. Now, all secret information can remain confidential.

Data recovery

In particular situations where the server crashes or isn’t located in the premises, then data recovery shouldn’t be the company’s headache. Most team communication platforms provide BCP (Business continuity process), if they sign up with cloud. This simply means that majority of your data can be retrieved, without any difficulty.

Audit trail capabilities

With nimble features, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that enterprise apps are well equipped with audit trail capabilities too. Hence, when an audit takes place, all logs in terms of structure, logs and format can be traced back for a transparent audit. So no more would the company have to worry about creating multiple files in varied devices for data backup. Modern day apps have that covered for you.

Granular file sharing

When a company decides to invest in a team communication platform, it must also consider the control users should have on the system. Team communication apps provide increased user control, with granular file sharing. They set up a user friendly admin panel that empowers employees to send certain file or particular file sizes to desired users.

Compatibility with in-house systems

CTOs are also apprehensive about how newer collaborative methods would behave with existing systems of the company. However, these communication tools are independent softwares and do not affect the in-house systems. Many of these platforms communicate well with existing softwares, bringing all your important information on a single screen, thereby increasing efficacy. The same is achieved using external app integrations or building custom webhooks. Whatever the case, when messaging apps provide their service as a platform, the benefits can be leveraged to suit specific organizational needs.

A gradual shift to smarter mediums of inter departmental communication is here and is slowly but surely adopted by a lot of organizations. Hence, better messaging options are a must have in most modern business setups.

The author is CEO and Founder, Flock