Running a business remotely is a tall order, especially if you haven’t yet found the work and productivity apps that work best for you and your team. But with so many productivity and management apps out there today, how do you know which ones you need?
To start with, you need to ask yourself: what specific problems are you looking to solve by using these apps? Sometimes, an app that has all the bells and whistles you can think of isn’t actually the best. It doesn't matter how many different kinds of remote work apps you look at...
...if you don't know how to use them properly.
In a past blog post, we discussed the importance of harnessing the power of project management apps. Today, we’ll walk you through a few more types of apps that are perfect for remote work and the essential features of each one! On that note, let’s begin!
Project Management Apps
Let’s start with what we know! We’ve already discussed why project management apps are important. When your business has requirement after requirement pouring in from your clients, you need an efficient way to organize all of that and keep track of all your deliverables.
You can, of course, use a spreadsheet if you want to cut costs, but a good project management app is always a worthwhile investment. This app should enable you to create interactive to-do lists that you can easily rearrange to accommodate plan changes or setbacks. Ideally, you should be able to add a task, set a deadline for it, and specify how much this task should be prioritized compared to others on your list.
One other thing these apps can do that a spreadsheet can’t is that they allow you to pick from various layouts. The option of different views, like a calendar, list, or category view, is helpful for sorting through the variety of your projects.
Apps like Asana and Trello can help your team stay up-to-date on all of your upcoming deliverables.
Communication Apps
There is no remote work app that can truly simulate the feeling of working together in an actual office, so it’s on you to try to get as close to that as possible.
One of the best ways to go about this is by choosing an excellent team communication app. This app should enable you to stay in touch with all of your team members with ease and be simple enough that team members can figure out how to use it in a short amount of time. Work communication apps are different from straightforward messaging apps. They should make it easy for you to organize your tasks and threads so that you don’t get anything mixed up, and so important messages don’t get flooded by replies and acknowledgments.
There are many work chat apps available on the market with user-friendly interfaces and have everything you need to communicate effectively, one of the most popular being Slack. As long as you do your research and keep these pointers in mind, you will no doubt find the best communication app for your team.
And we all know how important communication is.
Employee Management Apps
As a business owner, you probably already know how time-consuming and tedious it can be to manage employee schedules and payroll. But with the help of a tried-and-tested employee management application, your life can become much easier.
The ideal employee management app should allow you to automate various steps of the payroll process and track time and labor. It should support the function of your HR team, which means it should be able to accept and sort employee feedback, allow you to organize and manage your employee database, and easily summarize performance data and reports. Another thing you should consider is how well it integrates with your other apps and systems.
Gusto, PeopleSoft, Kissflow, and Bullhorn are just some of the many employee management apps out there. Some apps work better for businesses of different sizes, so be sure to keep that in mind when you go on the hunt for the perfect one for your company!
It's all about finding the right fit.
Conclusion
We hope you learned a thing or two from this blog! With most operations shifting online in the pandemic, we believe that businesses should embrace all the tools available today. Having a couple of go-to work applications will greatly boost your productivity and increase your chances of scaling your business!
Good luck, and expect more work-related blogs like these from TopVA!