Different types of groups on a collaborative platform

Launching a collaborative platform or enterprise social network within your organization means sharing information in a new way. It’s a move away from mainly disseminating information personally – via email for example, or via intranet when done for the entire company – to sharing and collaborating through groups.

Groups are the new medium of information transmission and, progressively, the entire flow of information will pass through them.

How to identify them?

Here are the most common types of groups that you can create on your collaborative platform.

News group

This is a space for information and exchange. This may be a general news group for all members or various news groups based on the geographic location of the business (locations). These groups are most often open and accessible to all. There could be a General group, accessible by default to all members registered on your platform.

Project group

A group whose goal is the undertaking and/or follow-up of a project over time and which is the focal point of the associated team. This group plays an essential role on a daily basis in the sharing of information and documents and in communication in a broad sense, particularly regarding multi-site teams or digital nomads.

Group associated with a business/service or a function

This type of group promotes mutual assistance, information/knowledge sharing in a general way within a team, a service or a department sharing the same profession within the organization.

Group associated with a theme

This group will facilitate the sharing of information and knowledge on a specific subject. A market watch group or working groups focusing on the company business plan are examples of thematic groups.

Group associated with a branded product or service

This group brings to the organization the resources involved in the marketing, production, product or service support in a transverse way for innovation and information sharing purposes. It promotes the flow of information by decompartmentalizing teams and facilitates synchronization among teams that don’t share the same trade applications.

Group associated with a business process

This type of group transversally gathers the resources involved in the process aimed at information, mutual assistance or optimization. These are also heterogeneous groups that bring together people of different backgrounds.

We conclude with a trick: locate the mailing lists that have been created in your organization; each one of these lists represents one possible group that can be created on your collaborative platform.

In the next article, we will share some tips on how to successfully launch a group 🙂

______

This article is part of a series focusing on to the best practices to be adopted for the launch and implementation of a collaborative platform or private social network within a company or organization.