If you own or run a business, then you’ll know that productivity is one of the most important factors that leads to growth and success. It can be the key to your ongoing prosperity or to your decline and downfall and many entrepreneurs find managing their daily productivity to be an uphill struggle. There are many factors that determine productivity but in broad terms it lies with your two Ts… Tools and Talent!
As important as it is to ensure your staff are motivated, it’s also vitally important to make sure they’re using the right tools to get the job done quickly and efficiently. So while a hidden camera may be an efficient tool for ensuring that employees aren’t engaging in time wasting or inappropriate activities, so too can taking a diligent look at the business apps they use help to ensure that their productivity is optimal.
These apps are not only better for your productivity than their commonly used counterparts, but each is either free or has a workable free version so you’ll also drive down costs.
Stop using MS Word, Use Google Docs
MS Word optimization for iOS is fairly good, but it still pales in comparison to Google Docs. Many of us know the frustration of sending the same document to multiple recipients then after a few minutes getting bamboozled by several different sets of feedback from multiple recipients.
Besides being pound for pound a better and more user friendly word processing platform than Microsoft’s offering, Google Docs allows for quicker and easier collaboration. Upon creating a document, the writer can grant access privileges to anyone in their Google circle, anyone who’s been given the link or just about anyone on the whole internet.
No longer must we reconcile notes from multiple documents and recipients! Everyone with access to the document can be granted editing privileged will be able to make annotations or alterations that are colour coded to show who made what changes.
Don’t Save Screen Grabs In Photoshop, Use Skitch
Photoshop is a sophisticated and multifaceted piece of kit (not to mention somewhat expensive), but for occasions that require very minimal image editing such as taking a screen grab of an error message to send to your tech support department or store a digital receipt for your accounts department, it can be like cracking a walnut with a sledge hammer. Skitch allows you to quickly and easily create, save, share and resize images.
Don’t Email Links. Send Them Through Twitter
In a world where marketing costs are a staple overhead for most businesses, the best publicity is free publicity. Therefore, when sharing links where confidentiality isn’t an issue, consider using Twitter instead of email. Not only can you broaden your business’ exposure by using hashtags, but your intended recipient is more likely to respond quickly to a Twitter notification than an email.
Don’t create a new document, use Evernote
It’s astonishing how many of us open a new MS Word document when we need to make a note. Unfortunately, this does not allow for easy recall or collaboration. And you could end up with hundreds of disorganized documents taking up space on your hard drive! Evernote allows you to store your notes and documents in one place. Once it’s in there, everything is eminently searchable, even an old business card that you snapped and filed away for future reference.
I hope you enjoyed this article about how to improve productivity with free and fantastic iOS apps for your iPhone or Mac.
Interested in more articles about helpful applications?
Read My Posts:
- How To Improve Social Media Marketing Through Scheduling
- 5 Fantastic Free Image Editing Software Platforms
Published by Michael J Schiemer
Owner of Bootstrap Business
Money - Marketing - Motivation
Digital Marketing | SEO | Social Media
Mike Schiemer Builds Better Business
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