Freedictionary.com provides the following definition of collaboration – to work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.

There are multiple types of collaboration, so let’s compare and contrast two of the most common forms – collaboration in a face to face meeting and document collaboration.

During collaboration in a face to face meeting, everyone hears the same presentation at the same time; everyone hears all the comments; and everyone can respond in real time if they disagree with the comments. The author hears one stream of comments sequenced to correspond with their presentation. The results are normally fairly productive.

Now consider what happens with document collaboration – the author forwards a document to several recipients, who all work on it in isolation. The author receives multiple word documents back with many changes in multiple colors when Track Changes is enabled, some of them overlapping. It is nothing like the synergy experienced in a face to face meeting.

Our goal at SavvyDox is to bring the same level of synergy achieved in a face to face meeting into the world of document management.

The first priority is to ensure that everyone has the same copy of the document as their starting point – that’s version control and SavvyDox provides a very intuitive and easy to use version control capability. SavvyDox provides a document rather than a link, so it can be accessed while on line or offline. You access the current version with 3 clicks using SavvyDox and that takes about 5 seconds. You don’t have to look through a complicated folder structure to find the current version of the document in question and you don’t have to spend 15 minutes trying to find the document.

Now that all the reviewers have the current version of the document, how does SavvyDox align the balance of the process with a face to face meeting?

SavvyDox’s unique collaboration solution ensures that there is a parallel review of the document – same as a face to face meeting – rather than a slower serial process. Only the author of the document can change the original document – same as a face to face meeting. The reviewers don’t have to reread an entire document to find changes since the last version they read – page thumbnails navigate them to the exact pages that contain changes. All reviewers can see changes from other reviewers in real time – same as the face to face meeting. All reviewers have the capability to respond to others’ suggested changes in real time – same as the face to face meeting.

Document revision is simplified for the author since all the changes come back in a single stream aligned sequentially by page that they impact – same as a face to face meeting. When there has been a discussion about any change, the comments are linked together – same as a face to face meeting.

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