Running a business takes a great deal of work and a lot of time. Sometimes it feels as if we are needlessly spending too much time on tasks like email, IT, and other necessary jobs.
Thankfully, there are a number of productivity apps that can help us make better use of our time.
Canva
Businesses rely on visuals for brochures and websites to spread their brand across social media platforms. Many companies don’t have a graphics artist on staff to create these beautiful graphics. A graphics app like Canva is a must for any business that needs to create images and artwork.
Canva offers all kinds of templates, photos, fonts, and icons for designing graphics. You can also upload your images and logo. The templates are great for use on Facebook, Pinterest, advertisements, and more. They are easy to use, and you don’t have to be a graphics artist to use Canva.
CloudApp
CloudApp is one of the best screen-capturing and recording apps to boost business productivity. With so many businesses today with employees working from home and communicating through online meetings, this app can provide the context of a meeting without wasting time.
Businesses can save time using the screen recorder app instead of taking the time needed for meetings and long-winded emails. CloudApp allows you to record a screen as a video, annotate gifs or images and share as a link. Being able to make a screenshot recording instead of writing out everything will save time.
Asana
Asana is a productivity app designed to help teams track their work. It will organize tasks into projects and more. Other project trackers do not allow other employees, partners, or guests to collaborate on different projects, as Asana does. Collaborators can be temporary or permanent team members and can be added or deleted from tasks.
Not only assigning tasks, but Asana also allows for discussions and direct management at the task level. Complex projects can be broken down further into subtasks and will track each subtask. They offer four plans, including a free plan that allows up to 15 team members.
Slack
Slack is one of the best all-around productivity apps for business. Some of the things Slack can do include:
- Team Communication Channel allows teams to communicate using direct messaging or group messaging. Share screenshots and documents, Google Docs, and Google Sheets.
- Content Tracker Channel will keep track of how many times a website or content has been mentioned by another website. It gives an overview of a company’s social media presence.
- Product Sales Channel uses the utility app Zapier for connecting apps to any other app. This lets users view all sales and get notifications every time a sale is made.
- Stock Watch Channel is used to watch stocks but can also be used to organize emails, check in on competitors, manage numerous social media accounts, and more.
- Site Status Channel integrates with the Updown.io monitoring service. It allows a business to monitor the working status of its website. Updown.io checks a website every 30 seconds and sends alerts when it goes down.
- Support Channel uses Help Scout to manage customer questions through email and view and respond to customers.
- MailChimp Channel monitors subscriptions, email lists, and emails without having to log in to the MailChimp website.
Grammarly
When we write emails and letters, we want our spelling, punctuation, and grammar to be correct. But we miss mistakes, and a poorly written business letter, brochure, or website can cause a business to look unprofessional.
Grammarly is a good app that will check for many types of grammar mistakes, including passive sentences, punctuation errors, spelling, confusing sentences, vocabulary usage, and more. It makes it easy to check all correspondence before hitting the send button.
Neat
Neat is one of the best digital expense-tracking apps. Considering cash flow and finances are the lifeblood of any company, tracking expenses is a necessity. Neat is a simple bookkeeping app that tracks finances without taking up too much time.
Business owners use Neat to track and organize invoices, receipts, spending, sales, and expenses, and to get a visual of all financial aspects of a company in real time. With Neat, you can even use their cloud storage for receipts and tax records, so you will always know where they are.
Bonus: ExpressVPN
While this one isn’t a productivity app as such, a virtual private network (VPN) is crucial for a business to function efficiently and safely. A VPN will provide advanced security protocols, keeping a company safe from hacking and other cybercrimes and protecting its data from theft.
Like most virtual private networks, ExpressVPN uses encryption and a no-logs policy to keep data safe. What makes them different from most is that they are located in the British Virgin Islands, which is an autonomous country with strict information disclosure law, even though it technically falls under the UK.
They have three paid plans and are currently offering 15 months of usage for the price of 12 months, with each one offering a 30-day money-back guarantee (essentially a 30-day full-feature trial).
Summary
These seven productivity apps will help any business operate more efficiently. Productivity apps like these can help owners design graphics, manage team projects, simplify online meetings, manage social media accounts, and track finances.
