Launching a startup was never considered easy. As if developing a business plan, getting funding, and focusing hard on product development wasn't enough, the entrepreneur has to worry about attracting key employees, taxes and benefits, creating a pleasant working environment, and building a culture of teamwork and collaboration.

But today's startups face an even more difficult challenge: working effectively as virtual teams. Almost every startup these days, certainly in my experience, is at least partially made up of dispersed employees—oftentimes in different cities or states, and sometimes even spread across country boundaries. Many startups, at least in the technology field, are made up entirely of individuals in separate locations. How then do they function? How can the entrepreneur possibly succeed with his or her venture if there's no single "place" where employees can regularly meet and work? Email and instant messaging are not the answer—teams become quickly overwhelmed trying to manage their collective work that way.

But there is a solution! For startups with "dispersed," "distributed," or "virtual" team members (whichever term you prefer!), the OnePlace online team collaboration and work management system is actually ideal.

Here's why. OnePlace brings the functions of (1) team collaboration, (2) project management, and (3) personal productivity together into a single on-demand solution, all available to you and your team in one place online. It does this by allowing you to create "workplaces," where you and your team members can come together virtually to share information, collaborate, and plan the work required to accomplish your common goals.

Workplaces are the central concept within OnePlace, letting people share information and collaborate together to produce results. Workplaces can be used in many different ways, such as collaborating with clients or vendors, for managing projects, and for storing and sharing critical business information.

You can set up just the workplaces you need, and name them whatever you want. For example, a startup could have separate workplaces for: • Product development (one for each product, or one for each aspect of a product, such as hardware and software) • Marketing—projects, campaigns, PR/media relations, conferences, whatever • Sales or business development • External partnerships (one for each) • Clients (where people from each client can collaborate privately online with your team) • Customer service • Investor communications • Financial reporting or fund-raising activities In short, whatever "workplaces" you need for your employees, clients, partners, even your vendors to collaborate and share information and resources—easily and effectively!

Teams can collaborate on the status of projects, share ideas, and discuss upcoming work in multiple online discussions, enabling real-time problem solving. Supporting documents and files are consistently archived in discussion threads.

OnePlace lets your team members easily manage all their projects and tasks. You always know who's doing what, and the status of that work—on a continuing, real-time basis. Everyone who is authorized has access to all your shared information, such as files, lists, and notes.

The best thing of all is that your employees can access all the workplaces they are authorized for on OnePlace from any browser, anywhere—even via their mobile phones! OnePlace not only has a rich web interface, but an iPhone® optimized web interface, too—and a general mobile user interface that works with most other web-enabled mobile devices.

When you look at online, subscription-based collaboration solutions on the market today, we're confident you'll find nothing that even comes close to all the features and functions available to you with OnePlace! And, if you're a startup looking for enhanced productivity from your geographically dispersed employees, you'll find that OnePlace gives you unfair advantage over your competition.

To start using it today, look for the "Free Trial" button on our home page. And start getting your team collaborating at full speed!

Written by Graeme Thickens