It floors me to see companies still without any collaborative or knowledge sharing solution. Instead of a document and knowledge base, they use email as a big, messy filing system. Marketing collateral, proposals, sales presentations, spreadsheets - they're either on somebody's hard drive or in someone's email. Need that knock-out  sales presentation from three months ago? Start hunting. And when you find it, make sure it's the right version.

Using email and hard drives for document storage is inconvenient, costly and can even land you in legal trouble.

On the other hand, collaboration technology is more affordable and more accessible then every before. 

In most Western countries, corporate directors and senior executives are legally responsible for the content and quality of publicly reported accounting statements. Yet, until recently, most companies built their financial reporting process around a loose workflow of Excel documents attached to emails. 

Clarity Systems, a Toronto-based software company, is enjoying a great deal of success addressing this problem. Their Clarity FSR software bolts on a reliable and robust database backend while retaining the familiar Excel front-end for end users. With FSR:

"Every number in the final report links directly back to a single data source ensuring that there are no conflicting numbers anywhere in the report. And changes to that source number automatically cascade through the report. This ensures there is only "one version of the truth."

But what if you're not a public company? What if you don't need a solution quite as sophisticated as Clarity FSR? What if you just want to make sure that proposals are stored and easilty accessible for future use and the right presentation gets in the right salesperson's hands at the right time? Well, you're in luck because simple document management and collaboration systems are more accessible and affordable than ever. 

My first foray into collaboration software was Lotus Notes in 1987. Being so far ahead of its time, it was difficult to describe. Was it a database with a scripting language? Email on steroids? A forms package and workflow package? A document repository. How about all of the above? Either you got it or you didn't.

Besides being difficult to categorize, it was also very expensive. Try $60,000 for a starters. 

Now there is a groupware or collaboration solution that fits every budget.

Looking for something free? Why not start with a simple Wiki system? Popularized by Wikipedia, a Wiki is a website that is available to and maintained by a community. That community could be a sales team, a company or, in the case of Wikipedia, any registered user on the Internet. Through the contribution of the entire community, a Wiki grows and becomes more useful over time.  Wiki software is available as Open Source - ie. free.

Need something a bit more structured? Try Google Apps. Hosted by Google, Google Apps is a suite of office applications that you access using a browser. Entire teams can share and collaborate on documents, share calendars and build and maintain Intranets.

The price? How about $50 per person, per year. If you don't think it's reliable or secure enough for you, consider that the City of Los Angeles recently announced that they will be switching all their employees from Microsoft Office to Google Apps.