Virtual Collaboration - Advantages

Advantages

(see advantages of virtual teams)

Pooling of expertise: Virtual collaboration provides more opportunities for experts to join project groups where their knowledge can be best used, and be complemented with other experts whose knowledge contributes to a common goal. Virtual collaboration allows teams to be formed based on subject and expertise, without the restriction of physical proximity of collaborators. The pool of expertise is much greater abroad than in most local team settings, meaning that virtual collaboration gives teams an opportunity to add a quality expert that fits the needs of the team. This can be proved by the fact that dispersed teams with recruited experts tend to have higher net earnings than local teams with a local expert.

Cost Effective: Compared to face-to-face meetings of distributed group members, virtual collaboration is much less costly. The time and costs associated with transportation to physically bring together team members from different geographic locations can be substantially higher than the cost of a virtual collaborative application. Software used to connect distributed teams can be found for free on the internet, with more feature-loaded and specialized applications having a one-time cost or a paid subscription.