There's a great variety of collaboration technology available for tasks like organizing meetings and completing reports, but companies still tend to use email, which is infamously inefficient. One of the barriers to greater collaboration tool adoption may be the challenge of determining which tools make the most sense for an organization, writes Baseline's David Strom, who reports on several enterprises that have found tools that work for them.

To streamline its operations in a tough real estate market, Shore Mortgage deployed a document management portal from Xerox, called BlitzDocs. The Birmingham, Mich., company uses the portal as its central knowledge repository. The system offers a single place to store and share data and documents throughout the entire underwriting process. Documents can be turned around in 24 hours now, and the company has boosted its sales volume by approximately 25 percent, says CIO Pat Hinman.

Practical Action, a non-profit group in the United Kingdom, uses one of the more well-known document management solutions, SharePoint.  The group's 700 employees are based in many locations around the globe and rely on the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) tool to share documents. The system requires users to enter metadata, which some would rather not take the time to do, but before any project is funded it has to be documented in SharePoint, according to Bryan Scurfield, IT manager.

Scosche Industries, a car-audio supplier in Oxnard, Calif., needed better tools for providing on-the-job instructions to its installers and communicating more efficiently in real time with its dealers. The company deployed a collaboration tool from Radish Systems, which enables support agents to send schematic diagrams to installers via smartphones.

SmithAmundsen, a law firm based in Chicago, was looking for a better way to get lawyers in different locations to collaborate in real time. The firm ended up replacing its phone system with Cisco IP phones so that it could integrate sophisticated presence-aware tools. It uses a number of applications from Cisco, such as WebEx video and desktop conferencing, to make it easier for lawyers to locate and consult with subject-matter experts.

For more:
- see David Strom's article at Baseline

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