Running a business is difficult, especially trying to keep all of the moving parts working together to keep your business profitable. Not only do you have to provide incredible products and services, but keep up with administrative tasks while ensuring your team is equipped and productive.
In this global economy, you have more demand for your time than ever. These may be business in nature or personal. Regardless of their source, they take you away from the office at sometimes inopportune times. Therefore, most business owners and CEOs need tools that make their mobile devices a mini office away from the office.
Thankfully, there are plenty of apps available that make it easy to take your business with you so you never miss a beat. Here’s a handful of apps to try to keep your business going even when you’re not at the office.
Caring For Your Investment
We would be remiss if we didn’t discuss protecting your most valuable business asset before jumping into the apps to help you stay connected. What good would it be to have all these tools, if the platform on which they reside doesn’t work?
When you get your phone, be sure you obtain two accessories that will ensure it stays useful for as long as you need it. First, grab a quality screen protector, like the ones from BodyGuardz. Too many times phones become unusable due to cracked or malfunctioning screens and it leaves you with another hurdle to overcome when working remotely.
Second, ensure you have a quality phone case that will protect from impacts at a minimum. Depending on your particular business, you may also want something to protect against dust and water.
Once you’ve protected your phone, you can now download the apps you need for your business.
Top Business Management Apps to Try
Square
Your business depends on being able to process payments. Whether you run a brick and mortar business, are a service provider, run an eCommerce store, or need to be able to send invoices, Square can do it all. Square’s transaction fees are very reasonable and they don’t have a monthly service charge like other transaction services.
Slack
Communicating with your team is critical to move projects forward. Slack is a better replacement for instant messaging when email may be too slow. The channel feature allows multiple people to participate, keeping conversations organized. This allows you and your team to be better informed without being overwhelmed.
Zoom
In a time when being able to meet remotely is more important than ever, having a reliable and cost-effective video conferencing tool is critical. These remote meetings may be for anything from employees working virtually to sales presentations and partner meetings. For companies that need less than 100 attendees on calls, this is the most robust option for the cost.
Evernote
Today’s CEOs are looking for ways to declutter, better organize, and slim down. Carrying a padfolio or notepad is outdated with apps like Evernote. This allows you to take notes, share information, and easily organize it so you can review it when you need it rather than searching through pages of unrelated notes.
Toggle
When you need to track time, either for your or your team, Toggle makes it incredibly easy. With a mobile app for both iOS and Android, it can be used by any CEO with a smartphone. It also allows you to easily export time-based invoices directly from the app.
Trello
If you need a more robust tool for task and project management, Trello may be just the ticket. It allows you to easily create projects and individual tasks, assign people to each task, move them through a funnel within the project, and more. Trello will give you a simple overview of projects so you can keep everything on schedule without having to ask for updates constantly.
Google Suite
Google Suite is the most robust set of tools you can get for your business, as it also integrates with many other tools.
Natively, it includes Google Mail, Google Calendar, and productivity apps like Docs, Sheets, and Slides. It also includes options for connecting without needing a separate tool, like Google Hangouts and Google Currents. You also have Google Drive, a cloud storage space.
Google Suite is easily the most comprehensive single tool collection available to help your business run efficiently all in one place.
Monday
No toolset would be complete without a customer relationship management (CRM) system to manage client contact information, notes, and more. Going beyond just basic client management, Monday also integrates other features like project and task management, time tracking, a shared calendar, file sharing, and more. This is quite a robust business tool for those without an IT team to keep a database going.
RingCentral
Keeping in communication is critical, in and out of the office. Despite the amount of communication that happens via web conferencing and email, phone calls are still critical to business development and management.
RingCentral allows for seamless movement from taking calls on your desktop phone or laptop to your mobile phone when you are out of the office. Your clients have one phone number and will be able to reach you wherever you are.
Apps on Apps
Running a business has never been more efficient. Apps are the new way to continue to keep your business afloat when you’re on-the-go. These apps are helpful not only for CEOs, like you, but also for your employees so they can continue to take on responsibility while the boss is out of the office.
