{"id":37837,"date":"2015-09-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newrcblog.wpengine.com\/glip-boosts-collaboration-to-help-women-and-children-worldwide\/"},"modified":"2021-12-07T23:10:18","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T07:10:18","slug":"ringcentral-video-boosts-collaboration-to-help-women-and-children-worldwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/us\/en\/blog\/ringcentral-video-boosts-collaboration-to-help-women-and-children-worldwide\/","title":{"rendered":"RingCentral Video Boosts Collaboration to Help Women and Children Worldwide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CAN-MNCH<\/a>Collaboration is core to the mission of the Canadian Network for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (CAN-MNCH<\/a>), which coordinates the efforts of non-governmental organizations, academics and health workers in promoting the health of women and children around the world. When CAN-MNCH needed to improve collaboration within its own organization, it turned to RingCentral Video.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, we used email, Dropbox, Google Docs<\/a>, different cloud servers, video conferencing tools like Skype, teleconferences — and we\u2019ve managed to amalgamate all of that using Glip [now RingCentral Video],\u201d says Executive Director Helen Scott. (By the way, if you like her story, you can vote until Oct. 2 as part of the people\u2019s choice phase of judging for the Constellation Research SuperNova Awards, where CAN-MNCH is a finalist<\/a> in the Future of Work category.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The challenge RingCentral Video addressed for Scott was organizing a virtual team, including an extended team of working group representatives from more than 80 organizations operating in over 1,000 regions globally.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada’s top experts were willing to join our secretariat, but were not willing or unable to move from their established communities in order to set up a traditional office,\u201d she explains. So she needed to run an organization that would be virtual and distributed but still effective.<\/p>\n

Her efforts are a continuation of a commitment to promoting maternal, infant and child health worldwide that Canada made in 2010, when it hosted the G8 Summit<\/a> of world leaders and launched the Muskoka Initiative<\/a>. CAN-MNCH was established three years ago to better coordinate the efforts of all the charities and public health organizations who get funding as part of the initiative. After an additional $3.5 billion in funding was announced by Canada last year for maternal, newborn and child health from 2015-2020, Scott recognized she was faced with a growing challenge.<\/p>\n

Although she has a core team of just six people, she must also coordinate with three working groups, including about 48 people who are representatives of member organizations. Not only are those people scattered around Canada, but some spend all or part of their time overseas.<\/p>\n

Keeping their activity organized over email, Skype, and a collection of other collaboration tools quickly proved unwieldy, Scott says. She found herself spending too much time searching her email, trying to recreate the workflow of messages and file attachments. At one point, the CAN-NMCH team was reconsidering whether they really needed to get at least the core team together in one office location, which would have required several people to relocate or be replaced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we found [RingCentral Video], and we realized we didn\u2019t have to,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Searching the web for communication and collaboration services to support a virtual team, she saw RingCentral Video as the best match for her requirements. Still, she admits she had her doubts at first, given that everything in RingCentral Video including file sharing was structured around team workstreams rather than the folders she was used to.<\/p>\n

After another week or two of struggling to get work done with a fractured collaboration toolset, however, \u201cwe said we\u2019ll just try it for a week, and then we\u2019ll decide. And once we did, we said, this is a little miraculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Effective Teamwork<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201cmiracle\u201d Scott discovered was continuous communication, which kept team members in touch throughout the day, plus the ability to gather all modes of interaction into team conversations<\/a>. \u201cAll of our internal collaboration is through [RingCentral Video] \u2013 to the point where it\u2019s very rare that we would send an email \u2013 and we certainly don\u2019t share files any other way,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Email is still important for communication with the rest of the world, but even external collaborators can be brought into RingCentral Video as guests if they are playing an important role in a given project.<\/p>\n

Scott\u2019s core team holds a daily video conference<\/a> as a way of meeting face-to-face, with the option of also doing screen sharing to show a presentation or a draft of a document. \u201cThe quality of the video-conferencing is far superior to any other product we\u2019d used,\u201d Scott says. Because of the way video is integrated with RingCentral Video, she can also launch a spontaneous video chat with any team or individual team member just by clicking the camera icon at the top of the screen \u2013 something she also does on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

The simplest way of communicating through the RingCentral App is by entering a message in the chat box, which Scott finds to be an excellent way to stay in touch. Some of it might read like idle chatter, but a message like, \u201cI\u2019m going out for a run \u2013 back in an hour,\u201d is actually useful information to share with collaborators in a virtual team. \u201cIt connects people in a way you don\u2019t get by email,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, task management<\/a> lets her focus collaborators on the work that must be done in a timely manner. Those items show up in the same message workstream as chat messages, but with specific assignments and deadlines associated with them. Tasks then become part of the team\u2019s and team member\u2019s to-do lists.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a management tool, it\u2019s fantastic,\u201d Scott says. \u201cIf someone in a different time zone needs you to do something, they can send you a task and know it\u2019s on your to-do list.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than any feature, she says, \u201cwhat I like best is that all of the individual processes can be handled on one platform. When you\u2019re trying to keep track of a project, it\u2019s all there in the thread \u2013 all the files, the photos, the task list, the project management \u2013 all together in one place.\u201d<\/p>\n

While RingCentral Video is used most intensively by CAN-MNCH staff, members of its working groups or other advisors can be added to project teams as needed. \u201cThey tend to come in and out,\u201d Scott says. \u201cI err on the side of keeping teams small, so we\u2019ll bring them in when they have something to contribute. If their work on the team is done, I\u2019ll take them out so they don\u2019t have to keep up with our chatter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting Work Done<\/strong><\/p>\n

How does RingCentral Video help CAN-MNCH get work done? Scott gives a couple of examples:<\/p>\n