Simplify cross-department collaboration.

Ensure your projects are completed correctly and efficiently by learning how to promote cross-department collaboration.

In many cases, business divisions, with their specific subject matter experts, aren’t in the same building, let alone in the same location. This can pose problems if they need to collaborate effectively — but it’s essential to do well if they want the business to succeed. Learn how you can help your departments work more effectively together.

Tips to improve cross-department collaboration.

Whether they’re in separate locations or just aren’t used to collaborating, it’s not always easy to get different departments to work together. But that doesn’t make it any less important.

Here are a few tips to help Improve your cross-department collaboration:

• Engrain collaboration in the company culture — Team members are more likely to collaborate when it’s a part of the company culture. Build trust between departments with team-building activities, meetings, and regular follow-ups on projects.
• Define communication channels — Implement solutions that make it easy for your departments to communicate. The easier it is to communicate, the more back-and-forth you’ll get between departments.
• Utilize collaboration tools — Online tools like project management and communication software help your departments stay on the same page as projects progress, no matter when or where they work.
• Encourage feedback — Listen to feedback from department team members. They can tell you what’s going well and, more importantly, what’s making the process difficult. Take the feedback and implement solutions to improve cross-department collaboration.

Simplify the approval process.

Many businesses require signed approval from a manager before a project can be passed from one department to another. Adding a signature the old-fashioned way, with printers, scanners, and fax machines, can hurt efficiency and hinder easy cross-department collaboration.

Instead of physical signatures, use software that allows electronic or digital signatures like Acrobat Sign. That way, department managers can add their stamp of approval (signature) with the click of a button, making it easy to approve projects and send them to other departments without missing a beat.

Discover more about how Sign can help simplify your cross-department collaboration.