Lead-in part

I have been in business development for over a decade, and I deal with international clients on a daily basis. As part of my job, I need to take notes and forward them to my business analysts, who then sit down with our development team to execute the deliverables. I am constantly in touch with different team members, and often we share ideas that we pass on to different teams.

In order to improve productivity and reduce the redundancy in our team, we started using different online collaboration tools. However, we found that most online collaborative tools are ineffective. Some had dashboards that were too complicated, and others had a very stiff learning curve. After the pandemic, when we all had to work from our homes, we saw how important online collaboration tools really were for our business. One of our sales associates introduced us to EdrawMind Online around that time, and we have been using this brainstorming and mind-mapping tool ever since.

Today, I am going to share my personal experience of using EdrawMind and how it has helped us increase our productivity, and how we are able to deliver all the projects on time.

What are online collaborative tools?

Online collaborative tools are software, frameworks, or platforms that allow an individual or team to work remotely on a project.

When we started to look for an online collaborative tool for our business, we made a list of features that it should fulfill. For instance:

• Cloud-based storage: As I stated here, most of the team members are working remotely, and we needed a tool that allows us to access files from the cloud.
• Intuitive interface: Most of us here would agree on the fact that a user-friendly interface is a must if you are dealing with non-tech team members.
• Affordability: Money played a very important part for us when we were finalizing the tool. If our company had to invest in a tool, it had to be affordable in all areas.
• Real-time collaboration: This was a mandatory feature that we were looking for. We did not care if there was no video or audio feature, but we needed a tool to allow our entire team to collaborate in real-time without lagging.
• Integration: Even though this was not necessary, we would have appreciated it if the online collaboration tool for business had some external integration, like Google Drive or Dropbox.

There are several online collaborative tools in the market, but sadly none of them come close to our requirements. We needed an online collaborative tool that would help us brainstorm, help us take notes, assign tasks, track the projects, and share the updates with our team - and all of them in real-time.

From our extensive research, it was only EdrawMind Online that came close to fulfilling our requirements.

What is EdrawMind Online?

EdrawMind Online is an online collaborative tool for businesses and organisations specialising in brainstorming, mind mapping, note-taking, outlining, remote collaboration, and much more, and that too, all in real time.

This online collaborative tool is a user-friendly mind-mapping software that allows my company to create different mind maps per our requirements. What is amazing about this tool is its cross-platform functionality, meaning it is compatible with all different operating systems and seamlessly works on different internet browsers. Another important feature of this tool that my company has preferred is how much it looks like Microsoft Office, which makes it more user-friendly. Most of my company’s non-tech members prefer this tool because of its closeness with MS Office tools. 

Another feature we all liked about this tool is how easily we can export our documents in multiple formats. Now we don’t have to use other tools to convert a JPEG into PDF or JPEG into Doc. With EdrawMind Online, we can collaborate in real-time and export the file in any format we require – saving our business analysts time when they make reports during project submissions.

Ever since we started using EdrawMind Online, we have not used any third-party tools for our project submissions.

EdrawMind Online features and reviews

Even though there are hundreds of features worth mentioning here, I would like to comment on two of such features that I have found highly productive.

Real-time collaboration

We subscribed to the paid version of EdrawMind Online because of its real-time collaboration. Now when we need to discuss a project, we all log in to our tool, and I share the personal invite with all of my team members.

Once they all accept it, we start discussing the project in detail by either creating a mind map or directly taking notes.

If we have to send those notes to some of our team members, we instantly convert them into a mind map that makes the notes creative and has a lasting impact.

Additionally, we also assign tasks right from the mind mapping canvas to our team members, and by accessing the Gantt mode, we can track the updates.

Since all of this is happening in real-time, we also tend to make connections between different subtopics, which helps our team to understand the intrinsic details of the project.

Brainstorming and mind mapping

EdrawMind Online is predominantly a mind-mapping tool that lets us create mind maps as per our requirements.

The tool comes with pre-built templates that help our team to get started without spending too much time creating something from scratch.

On multiple occasions, we have taken help from the templates to create our project outlines. This feature is praiseworthy as it saves ample time during our meetings.

Price

Unlike other tools that require a hefty amount, I personally liked the fact that EdrawMind comes with a free version, and the company also offers a trial version where you can access all the different types of diagrams, get on real-time collaboration, and access different functionalities.

We subscribed for a three-year plan for our team members, which costs less than $3.5 per month – considering the features and support it offers, I think this is a great investment.

Once you upgrade to the paid version, you get several other productive features, like cloud storage, presentation options, outline mode, and more.

Even though the free version offers several astounding features, if your goal is to have real-time online collaboration with your team members, you will need to subscribe to the paid version. If you have a large team where you are constantly brainstorming on different ideas, you will never regret this investment.

Final thoughts

As most companies are now looking to escalate their business, online collaborative tools are on the rise, and it is of paramount necessity that we invest in the right tool. After using EdrawMind Online for over a year, I can confidently say that this tool has not disappointed me a bit. Rather, with every update, I have found new features in it that have made our job easier and more effective. If you plan to upgrade your online collaborative tool for business, do check out EdrawMind Online – you will surely be amazed by how intrinsic the online collaboration feature really is with this tool.