A growing business will face inherent challenges to productivity, for the last few decades, business has become increasingly more digital. That means modern businesses are intertwined with the use of computers that have internet access, which whilst bringing countless distractions to impact on productivity, it really is our own fault if we are missing out on countless tools online that have been developed – much like apps – in the last few years that harness the latest digital technologies in order to maximise your productivity and that of your teams.
Google Drive or One Drive
Documents are saved on a daily basis and often they’re needed by more than one person on more than one computer. Thanks to Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive, the prospects of emailing updated documents to one another or risking your favourite USB memory stick in the hands of your clumsy colleague are safely dispelled.
Accessible on almost every operating system and device, Slack combines messaging and document editing and storage into one area. Create private channels, or open up the conversation to more parties at your discretion. You can also connect your existing online tools directly to the app to maximize it usage through one of dozens of integrations. Slack accounts start from free for small businesses.
Basecamp3 is project management software that allows users to discuss projects, share files, schedule appointments, set deadlines – the list goes on. Basecamp3, like the name implies, is a common ground for team members to touch base and co-ordinate ongoing projects, as well as outline new ones.Basecamp’s comprehensive search function, along with a daily recap email of all ongoing tasks, enables users to stay on top of their project progress. It essentially unifies all communications to ensure that each member of the team is reporting to the same place.
Basecamp 3’s exclusive “Clientside” feature keeps client feedback on the record and completely separate from the rest of your project. This means your client never sees anything they shouldn’t, and your team doesn’t have to tip toe around worried about saying the wrong things.
The first Basecamp (you would have a Basecamp for each client) is free.
Business has an inherent relationship with handling monetary transactions, and Hiveage allows you to manage, customise and calculate your invoices easily. A free service, Hiveage offers an estimation service to make things easier for you, which can then be easily converted into invoices once the client has accepted it.
As well as managing multiple teams and businesses on a single account, Hiveage enables users to accept payments in multiple currencies, cutting out any issues with conversion rates.
Hiveage’s time-tracking feature allows you to track your time (or your client’s), meaning at the end of the month you’re able to easily translate hours into currency to add to your invoice. A successful business deals with money efficiently and Hiveage’s streamlined approach is designed to make this happen.
Hiveage has multiple packages starting at free – allowing you to send unlimited invoices for free, forever.
Sometimes, you find something online that you want to review, read, or save for later. Yet, your bookmarks tab has become increasingly loaded down. Pocket allows you to save anything online for access at a later date. Furthermore, this tool syncs across all of your devices, so you never have to worry about running back to the office to review a presentation. You can access your Pocket anywhere, at any time.
Accuracy and proper grammar are crucial components of showcasing expertise and credibility when communicating with customers. However, you run a business, not a school. You can make sure all of your staff members compose emails, social media posts, blog posts, brochures, and nearly anything else without worrying writing mistakes through Grammarly. Essentially, you can eliminate the amount of time spent on trying to keep your grammar, spelling, and syntax accurate and professional. Grammarly features chrome and windows extensions.
Context-optimized synonym suggestions
Starts from free
Social media is a must for the contemporary business. It can be time-consuming to manage your content across each social platform though, so the developers at InstaSocial designed a service to address the multitudinous nature of social media management. InstaSocial allows you to manage and view all of your social media feeds in the same place.
With InstaSocial, you can reply to engagement from followers on any of your linked social media accounts, as well as schedule posts throughout the day (and night). This is an invaluable resource for maintaining your social media presence without devoting too much of your limited time to it.
InstaSocial also features a comprehensive analytics service that allows you to measure the engagement and growth and best performing content / hashtags, find optimal times of day to post & easily reschedule most successful content. It also offers research options allowing users to easily find relevant and engaging content, create high impact image posts with zero Photoshop experience and schedule it all in advance. Whilst social media can lead to impressive growth of your company, it’s difficult to measure at times, so InstaSocial’s analysis and scheduling means you don’t have to second-guess your strategy.
Printed business cards have become obsolescent. Most customers are probably going to toss or misplace them. OneCard™ allows you to create a digital business card, which can be shared infinitely. The app also allows users to save contact information into a device, which ensures your staff members, clients, and business contacts are never far away. Furthermore, the app allows immediate video conferencing within the app and can be used a website alternative for connecting with new leads.
Clever Checklist is another web-based task management system that enables users to organize and track the progress of tasks. Checklists for each job are created to keep track of everything that needs to be done. Processes, procedures, and policies are documented to show why things are done, and records and forms are produced to show what work was done, when it was done, and by whom. It keeps everything in one place, allowing for easy access and analysis of data and uses a series of customisable templates to make it extremely user-friendly and versatile.
Todoist is a task management service at heart. Essentially with Todoist you can upload any ideas about tasks that need to be completed, adding key dates, labels, notes, comments and even project folders to make the task at hand easier to complete. The service is used by over 5 million people across all of their platforms (iOS to Chromebook).
It’s important to know how to choose the right app and software for your work style, but the above are some of the available systems that do a good job helping you to avoid the distractions of everyday demands.
