It’s no surprise that workplace collaboration software has gotten hotter in the last couple years. Even before a global pandemic shook up the world and rearranged the economy, the workplace was becoming more complex and moving faster with each passing day.
By the end of March 2020, businesses were forced to mobilize their teams to work remotely and swiftly pivot operations. As teams have learned to work remotely, organizations have seen a need to invest in flexible tools that boost team productivity and morale.
In this post, we will highlight a specific tool helping organizations do just that: Confluence Cloud, brought to you by the experts in teamwork at Atlassian.Confluence Cloud is the ultimate information and collaboration hub. Take a look at six reasons why your organization could benefit from this tool.
6 Reasons To Use Confluence Cloud
1. Confluence Cloud Fosters Collaboration, Consolidation, and Community
Many people have misconceptions about Atlassian products, with one of those being that they are built for just software developers. On the contrary, the Atlassian stack empowers all teams to do better work and get it done faster, including:
- Finance
- Operations
- Legal
- Marketing
- HR
Confluence is Atlassian’s easy-to-use collaboration tool that connects people, knowledge, and ideas together in a shared workspace. It allows people to create, collaborate, and consolidate their work in one place instead of having those ideas, notes, and documentation spread around group chats, email chains, and personal documents.
Let’s say your team is working remotely for the first time. It’s difficult to get the job done and do it well when everybody has knowledge and information spread across different platforms, like Google Docs, PDF files, Excel spreadsheets, Slack messages, Notion blocks, and even Post-it notes.
Confluence Cloud consolidates that information into one platform where everyone is connected. It serves as a central hub where you can organize work, consolidate information, and become more productive as a team.
What’s also great about Confluence Cloud is that it’s completely customizable, allowing companies to use this powerful tool in different ways. You can use Confluence pages to:
- create a marketing plan
- house company policies
- document notes from a team brainstorm
- distribute internal communications, from quarterly updates to team outings.
By the way, at Modus Create, we use Confluence for all of the above functions. We are happy to talk to you about how it can be effective for your particular business goals.
Confluence Cloud not only keeps everyone on the same page about anything work-related, but it can also be a space that fosters a sense of community and promotes company culture.
The below graphic highlights the front-end capabilities of Confluence Cloud (information provided by Crazy Egg):
2. Confluence Cloud Provides Flexible Visibility and Control Levels
No matter the size of the company, having control over sensitive information is essential, but you still want to have the flexibility to share content when needed. Confluence Cloud takes care of both, providing organizations with the flexibility they need through space and page permissions.
Basically, you decide how much control you want to have. For larger, more complex organizations, Confluence Cloud Premium is an enterprise tier that provides more admin controls to keep information safe and keeps teams operating on all cylinders.
For example, you want to share the progress of a project you’re working on with a client and get their feedback. You want them to only comment on the content, but not have the ability to make any edits. Your wish is Confluence’s command because no matter what your situation is regarding visibility, you have complete control and flexibility to make it happen.
3. Confluence Cloud Can Scale as Your Business Evolves
If there is anything that we have learned these past couple years, it’s that nothing goes as planned and our environments are constantly changing. That’s why businesses need tools that allow them to pivot, act quickly, and scale accordingly. Just ask the toilet paper and hand sanitizer manufacturers about 2020.
Plans in Confluence Cloud give you the flexibility to face the world’s constant disruption, allowing you to choose the right features and functionality no matter what stage your business is in. Whether you are part of a five-person startup collaborating with the free plan or are a larger enterprise organization with thousands of global employees utilizing the premium plan, there’s a Confluence Cloud plan that aligns with your organization’s visibility and control needs.
Atlassian’s Confluence plans are as flexible as the tools they offer. As of last year, Atlassian started offering free Cloud trials to Server and Data Center customers. You can test-drive Atlassian cloud features for up to 12 months at no extra cost — without disrupting your teams — and evaluate if it’s the right move for your organization.
(If you are a current Atlassian Server or Data Center customer and would like to learn more about Cloud, check out our webinar about preparing for a successful Atlassian Cloud migration.)
4. Confluence Cloud Keeps Everything Organized
Confluence also serves as a hub for you to manage your files, app integrations, and even dashboards. For example, let’s say the marketing team at your organization is working on a marketing plan for a new product launch. They have the plan laid out in Confluence, and your graphic designer has completed all of the marketing collateral deliverables, which they upload to the Confluence page that houses the plan.
From there, your graphic designer can go to your group Trello board, which is embedded into this same Confluence page, and check off this task. Then the person in charge of making sure the marketing collateral gets produced can download the assets to send to the vendor, and so on. And all of these actions are happening in one place that everyone on the team can access. This is the perfect example that shows just how seamless work can flow when everything is organized in Confluence.
You can also integrate other tools with Confluence, like Jira, Trello, and Tableau for Confluence. The ability to easily integrate with other tools allows your teams to work more effectively and prevents them from wasting time jumping from one tool to another. Confluence integrations streamline information and allow for people to be more efficient with their time. Because at the end of the day, time is our greatest currency, right?
5. Confluence Cloud Has Ample Support Options
No matter which Confluence Cloud support you need, whether standard or premium, rest assured that you will have an abundance of support options available to you. From an extensive library of documents that help you use and administer your products, to an active community providing answers to some of your most frequently asked questions — there’s something for everyone.
Are you part of a large enterprise organization with a highly complex environment that needs 24/7 premium support? There’s a support plan for that. Or maybe you are just a team of 10; that’s where the incredibly supportive Atlassian community comes in to help. As Atlassian’s Enterprise Platinum Solution Partner, we at Modus Create offer a wide range of support services, and have helped complex enterprise organizations launch Confluence Cloud.
6. Confluence Cloud’s Flexible Collaboration
After reading this post, you have probably picked up on a common theme: flexibility. Confluence Cloud is extremely flexible and can be adapted to any organization’s size and business requirements. Even in what feels like a chaotic and constantly changing world, Confluence Cloud can bring you peace of mind knowing that it will help your organization not only survive a global crisis, but prepare you to succeed in the future.
If you would like to know more about Confluence Cloud and how it can help drive your business forward, reach out to one of our Atlassian Confluence Cloud experts.
