business apps

5 business apps to help you be more productive

A good business app can go a long way — both on an individual level and on a company-wide level. Apps can help you visualize workflows better, organize tasks more efficiently, and maintain a simple, yet effective standard of communication.

However, a major problem exists — there’s simply too much noise in the marketplace.

So instead of spending hours, days, or even weeks researching, finding, and testing different apps, here are a few quality business apps to get you headed in the right direction.  

Trello

Whether you’re planning your next family vacation or starting a new project with a group of coworkers, Trello is a simple way to keep your to-dos and thoughts organized.

With this productivity app, you can create multiple project boards and organize them into categories (by group, company, department, or activity). Afterwards, add lists to your boards and cards to your boards.

As a simple example, you could have a project board designated to a company-wide event, and within this board, you could have three lists: Need to Do, In Progress, and Done.

Each list could have a series of cards underneath it — with each card representing an activity, a task, or a to-do (like research venues or find a caterer). As you create and complete cards, they can be dragged from one list to the next.

Notes, links, labels, documents, people, and reminders can all be attached to each card.

Trello

Slack

The typical office communicates on multiple levels and requires a handful of tools and features to do so effectively. With Slack, you can streamline your office communication into one platform and minimize emails, meetings, and virtual back-and-forths.

To accomplish this, Slack gives you the ability to separate conversations by group, topic, or individual.

As an example, you could have a thread dedicated to each project, client, and department within your company. At the same time, you could also have side conversations dedicated to individuals or to a company-wide discussion.

On top of this, you can share images, links, or documents, highlight important messages, and use the search bar to hunt down previous conversations or shared documents.slack

OneNote

From desktop to phone to laptop, OneNote is the ultimate note-taking app. With OneNote, you can create many digital notebooks out of one and then further separate those notebooks into sections and pages.

You can add handwritten notes, images, or recordings to a page and collaborate with coworkers in real time. Include checklists and to-dos, embed Excel tables and Outlook emails, and export all content into a Word document.OneNote

RescueTime

This productivity app will help you do more, by doing less. RescueTime runs securely in the background and tracks all the time you spend on different applications and websites.

The general idea of RescueTime is to help you understand where you’re spending (or wasting) your time during the workday. With the aid of visual reports, you can make the decision to block distracting websites and even set time alerts on specific activities.

RescueTime will also provide you with a unique productivity score that varies based on working habits and customizable categories.  

RescueTimeBuffer

For businesses of all industries and sizes, social media has become more important than ever. But at the same time, it’s also become this big, black hole of time and resources — which is why you need a solid tool to help you out.

With an app like Buffer, the time and resources you and your coworkers invest into social media can be reduced, better managed, and improved overall.

Buffer gives you the opportunity to post to all social accounts simultaneously. So if all you want to do is post the same content to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (and all at once), Buffer gives you that option.

It also allows you to schedule out content. In other words, you could take an entire month’s worth of content, input the content into Buffer, and allow the app to automatically post on your behalf throughout the month on a schedule of your choosing.

This social media-focused app also provides you with post analytics, content approval features, and mobile integrations.

Buffer

 

The potential benefits of productivity apps in the workplace don’t stop here. In fact, with a custom business app, your business can improve customer service, streamline processes, and upsell services with a simple tap.