What makes a good collaboration platform?

Symphony and Markit partnership boost collaboration in Financial Services

Symphony and Markit have announced a partnership to promote the adoption of a Collaboration Platform as a Service (CPaaS) in the financial industry. The news is likely to provide a boost to the adoption of collaboration platforms across a sector which has been traditionally reluctant to entrust its confidential content to third-party services. The partners have released few details, but have indicated that the service will combine Symphony’s messaging platform with Markit’s data feeds and analytics to provide new applications, starting with reference data and advanced charting apps. So what makes a good collaboration platform?

Collaboration platform improves business efficiency

Collaboration Platforms aim to improve business efficiency by automating manual workflows and integrating communications into the applications people already use. ipushpull‘s customers, for example, use our plugins for Microsoft Excel to share live data across the office or to the other side of the planet directly from their existing desktop applications, reducing emails and accelerating business processes. However, the term collaboration is broad, incorporating everything from cloud-based productivity tools like Google Sheets to unified communications platforms like Slack and Circuit. It remains to be seen what Symphony and Markit will bring to the party.

Collaboration platforms must be available across every device

To succeed in an increasingly mobile world, a collaboration service must be available across every device. On mobile, lack of integration between applications actively hinders productivity, as Network World recently highlighted:

The process of switching between applications on a desktop is inconvenient, but most users manage. On a mobile device, having to constantly flip between applications while trying to remember data or cut and paste data is inefficient and can make users less productive.

Symphony has been slow to release mobile applications – its iPhone app only debuted this month, and we await the arrival of its Android offering.

Data Security and Encryption

The main sticking point preventing financial organisations from entrusting their confidential data to third-party services is concern about data security. The business and reputational risks associated with data breaches are potentially enormous. Both Symphony and ipushpull incorporate end-to-end encryption to reduce the risk of breaches, but we’ve found that financial service customers still insist on on-premises deployments of ipushpull to keep their data under their control. As the pressure to cut costs continues across the financial sector, the adoption of secure cloud services is likely to grow.

ipushpull lets you share live data between the applications you already use and the web. It automates workflows and simplifies business processes. It’s secure, access controlled and encrypted end-to-end. Sign up here for a free trial.