Document-centric collaboration

Document-centric collaboration is a new approach to working together on projects online which puts the document and its contents at the centre of the process.

Some previous collaboration tools used in businesses were criticised because of the separation of the document from the comments made on it. To combat this, new innovative companies have been promoting cloud collaboration tools which put the document back into the heart of the operation. This means displaying comments next to or in the document itself. The best systems allow users to tag certain parts of the document to create content specific comments.^[1]

Advances on previous technologies

Most analysts have argued that document-centric collaboration is the next step in the evolution of document collaboration. E-mail is an example of a collaboration tool which is not document-centric. Because documents must be attached, comments are kept separate and can be easily lost if the email is then forwarded or replied to. Email also makes it hard to keep track of the most recent version of a document.^[2]

Luckily, document-centric collaboration is now starting to solve these problems and improve efficiency within businesses. Some document-centric collaboration tools also include additional features, such as the ability to integrate into Microsoft Office.^[3]

The ability to collaborate has become more and more necessary with an increasingly mobile workforce and in an increasingly globalised world where even smaller companies will have offices and clients positioned all over the world. In 1990, there were an estimated 30,000 multinational companies. Today there are more than 60,000.^[4] In this more globalised world, document-centric collaboration makes sure that there is no divorce between comments and the document and avoids the confusion that lesser technologies have incurred often in the past.

Commonly used Document-centric cloud based collaboration software

• Google Docs
• Office 365
• Xaitporter

References