No one ever said collaborative working is easy. To make it a success definitely takes effort. But making that effort is worthwhile because the benefits of collaborative working can be significant, for both your service users and the organisations taking part.

 

In future posts we’ll look at some of the barriers to collaborative working, what can go wrong, and how you can make it easier.

 

But for now, perhaps because we’re still in a positive New Year frame of mind, we’re going to focus on the benefits of collaborative working.

 

What is collaborative working?

 

Before we start, it’s worth being clear what we mean when we say collaborative working.

 

There are many definitions posted on the web and published in guidance documents, some of which will suit your organisation and specific collaboration better than others.

 

From our experience supporting people and organisations involved in collaborative working, we’re happy with:

 

Collaborative working is two or more departments or organisations working together. This may be to contribute to a particular activity, function or project, or to contribute to a new organisation. The arrangement may be for a fixed time or it may be permanent.

 

Why do we work in collaboration?

 

It’s also worth looking at what’s driving us to work in collaboration.

 

The impetus may come from public opinion, government policy and the ongoing public sector drive for improved efficiency and effectiveness – most likely it’s a combination of all three.

 

However, what initially led to the collaboration is less important that what the outcomes may be. Because when collaborative working goes well, these can be extremely positive.

 

 

  1. Collaborative working helps you save money

 

Organisations working together are usually much more cost-effective than, what we now call, silo-based working. From joint procurement to cutting duplication, there are many ways that collaborative working can lead to savings. As evidence of this, our clients are currently using Verto to help them track £13.2 billion of planned savings.

 

  1. Collaborative working helps you be more effective

 

At the heart of collaborative working is improving outcomes for service users. When we focus more on why we’re providing a particular service and work together to find solutions, both of which collaborative working makes us do, we’re more likely to make a positive difference.

 

  1. Collaborative working helps you learn, share and repeat success

 

Closely linked to the point above, working with others and learning from their knowledge and experience, helps us understand more about what we really need to provide and how best to do this. Over time, services can become more resilient and expertise in teams can grow.

 

  1. Collaborative working helps you build a strong and united voice

 

When we share our knowledge and experience, we may also uncover shared problems and concerns. If we then need to lobby for change, one clear message sent by many will have much greater impact.

 

 

We designed Verto to help make collaborative working easier and more successful for you. In future blogs we’ll look in more detail at how Verto’s specific tools do this. Because whether you want to make communication, reporting, risk analysis, task management, resource management, performance planning or document storage and sharing easier, we can help.

 

For more information please call us on 0844 870 8785 or message us here.