Top 5 Apps for Your Growing Business

Top 5 Productivity Apps for your growing businessAs a business owner, you’re a juggler, a multi-tasker, a frequent flyer and an idea guru. You simply don’t have the time to also be a researcher and app tester. So we’ve put together a list of 5 key apps to truly simplify life and get you and your team organized.

Slack
While there are so many ways to communicate with your team, the sheer volume of conversations and where to find those conversations can be daunting. Some are e-mail, some text messages, some Skype. That’s where Slack comes in.

It’s a messaging tool but that is its most basic function. Not only is every conversation archived for easy reference and searching but with their open API, keeping your team coordinated has never been easier. You can set reminders, build projects, integrate 3rd party apps that you use regularly to easily reference files and even program notifications to auto-congratulate the sales team on closing a sale. Our team uses it as the equivalent of a virtual gong every time a sale comes through. The beauty of slack is the more you use it, the more it enhances the way you work through its machine learning design.

G Suite by Google Cloud
The ability to create, collaborate and access all of your assets from anywhere in the world is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. With G Suite, you have access to all of the applications that you are used to working with simply redesigned and simplified by Google. Those familiar with Microsoft office will find the transition to Google docs, sheets, forms, slides etc. not only simple but more cost efficient to deploy across large teams. No more worrying about version compatibility issues and sharing is pretty seamless. Live collaboration happens on your documents with the ability to watch the modifications happening in real time and see a history of modifications. Chrome Book users are already well versed with the G suite and its’ only a matter of time before this becomes the new standard for teams.

Evernote
This is a tool I’ve been touting the benefits of for years. Business owners have limited time and it’s in those brief moments of time that they come up with their most genius ideas. Evernote is the perfect home for those ideas. Evernote can be viewed as a repository for everything you know you will need some day. A list of things to remember? New business idea? Article idea for future pitch? Receipts? Favorite restaurants in different cities? Evernote is intelligent in that it stores your data in notebooks so you can identify all of your notes and ideas by topics or tags. If you purchase one of the Evernote Scan Snaps you can scan literally everything into Evernote and it auto-magically files receipts in receipts folders and recognizes images and makes scanned documents searchable. As a business owner with multiple responsibilities, Evernote gives my ideas and important documents a home for easy access wherever I am.

TripIt
One of the least glamorous aspects of a business person’s life is the often constant need to travel. TripIt has been designed to simplify literally every aspect. While you could simply check your emails for your boarding pass, flight times, hotel reservations etc., TripIt makes it easier by centralizing all of that information. By simply forwarding your travel itinerary, hotels, car rentals, restaurant reservations to plans@tripit.com, your travel itinerary is instantly synced into a trip in the app giving all of your necesssary travel related documents one handy home. But wait, there’s more…TripIt Pro will give you live updates to your flight, make you aware of all ground transportation options available to you at your destination, help you find the closest lounge and even notify you when a preferred seat on a flight becomes available. It’s like having your open personal travel concierge on demand.

1Password
In case you didn’t have enough to remember in a day, the volume of new passwords you need to create on an ongoing basis with various encryption requirements is overwhelming. 1Password allows you to literally forget all passwords but one, your master password. 1Password remembers every password you enter and safely keeps track of them for ease of access. When downloaded, it’s integrated into your web browser and is accessible on your IOS or Android device so literally your fingerprint can be all you need to access your most trusted information. With AES-256 bit encryption, a master password and a secret key, you can rest assured that your passwords and all of your personal identity information are safely locked away.