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Written by Ana Mayer
Aug 10, 2022 ·
5 min read
Even though it may not seem like it, productivity is actually extremely important both for you and your team to succeed. But while you might be able to motivate yourself to some extent, you still need to find different solutions that could help you motivate your team. Hence, here are the ten best Business productivity tools to start using.
The first thing to remember about business productivity tools is that they don’t have to be paid to be good. In fact, most high-quality tools you should start from are already available for free while providing you with the best functionality on the market. One of these is the famous G-Suite which is now known as Google Workspace.
Essentially, the G-Suite is the online version of the Microsoft Office Suite this time offered by Google. In addition to Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you also get a number of other tools and services, including Forms, Gmail, Drive, Keep, Calendar, Hangouts, and others. Many of these are suitable for teams (e.g. real-time editing in Docs) which is why they are ideal for collaboration and productive work.
Alternatively, you can use Office 365. This is the actual online equivalent of the standard Microsoft Office Suite offered by Microsoft itself. Office 365 includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Teams, and OneNote. Both G-Suite and Office 365 have very similar features and tools, so it’s up to you which one you prefer.
The most effective way to use either set of tools is by utilizing it for bigger teams or remote teams. Collaborating on a single project is difficult with bigger teams, but these tools can make it easier by allowing you to work together at the same time on the same document. This is the same reason why remote teams can benefit from such tools. However, G-Suite and Office 365 will be useful for regular teams as well.
Project management is one of the most important aspects of organizing your business to achieve maximum productivity. To help you with this, you can use Asana. This project and task management tool is easy to use and available on desktop and mobile which makes it perfect for working on the go as well.
Essentially, Asana lets you create a workspace where you can then create and assign tasks. You can add details to the tasks, tags, comments, etc. – all of these will ensure that every member of your team knows what is required of them. Asana can be a little bit difficult to figure out at first, but the learning curve isn’t very steep.
If you want to try an alternative to Asana which is somewhat more straightforward, then Trello is a good option. This project and task management tool lets you create a board where tasks can then be created and assigned. The two tools work in a similar way, but Trello is a bit easier to figure out for absolute beginners.
Just like Asana, Trello makes it easier to organize big teams. For example, if you are working with writers from the writing services reviews site Best Essay Education, you will want to assign tasks to these writers. That’s when Trello will be perfect for managing multiple writers and coordinating their work effectively.
Though Skype is definitely not as popular as it used to be (largely due to newer competitors), it is still a powerful tool for video and voice call communication. Having a tool like this is particularly important if you are working with remote employees or need to hold meetings regularly with employees that are on business trips.
Skype allows you to share text messages and files in addition to holding voice and video calls one-on-one or with multiple participants. Many professionals in different fields are used to Skype, so this is a good starting point for those who want to work with specialists of all ages.
On the other hand, if you are into new alternatives to Skype, then Zoom might just be your number one choice. During the pandemic, this tool became particularly popular both among educational institutions that used it for organizing remote classes and among businesses that held remote meetings this way.
Zoom has very similar features to Skype, but as more people tried it out, they realized that Zoom seems to be working somewhat faster than its older competitor. Of course, Skype is still a great choice for its features, but more and more businesses are switching to Zoom precisely due to its speed and ease of use.
One more option to consider for voice and video calls is Microsoft Teams. As mentioned earlier, this tool is a part of Office 365, so if you get a Microsoft account, you will already get access to Teams. Google’s alternative to this is Hangouts which is included in the G-Suite. In other words, there are multiple options currently available on the market that all have similar features. It’s up to you to decide which one is best for your team.
In addition to voice and video calling, you also need a powerful tool for texting. While emails are still a great way of communication, most businesses prefer using emails for longer letters, but if you need to send a short message, texting is preferred. That’s when you can turn to the professional messaging tool called Slack.
Perfect for teams, this tool lets you set up a workspace with multiple channels for discussing different topics separately. You can send text messages and files as well as chat in voice and video calls. In addition to that, Slack integrates with Drive and Dropbox among others. The tool is available both for desktop and mobile devices.
Though task management and time management may seem like they are one and the same thing, they are actually somewhat different – and that’s why you need Toggl. This time tracking tool will help you and your team start using your time in a smarter and more productive way.
Available on desktop and mobile, Toggl comes with a variety of features that range from scheduling to reporting to tracking time. All of these features are meant to help you understand how you are using your time and how you can start using it more effectively.
If you are looking for a powerful app for note-taking, then you should definitely consider Evernote. Google’s Keep already comes with a few good features, but Evernote takes note-taking to a whole new level. You can access notes from any device, attach files to your notes, and turn your notes into PDFs among other things.
The task management tool Todoist helps you do exactly what its name implies. This tool is perfect for small and mid-sized businesses that need to organize their teams to perform tasks, subtasks, projects, subprojects, etc. You also get to use features such as notifications, priority settings, and more.
One more app that can help you focus better on your work is Freedom. This tool blocks distractions such as websites and apps that could be preventing you from doing your job well. Once all your team members start using Freedom, you will notice that your employees are getting distracted fewer times per day which, in turn, leads to more productivity.
Social media marketing can take up a lot of time, even if you have a dedicated team of professionals working on your social media content and managing your profiles. That’s when a tool like Hootsuite can be of great help to you.
To put it simply, this is a professional social media marketing and management platform. It allows you to connect all your social media profiles and schedule posts for all of them from a single dashboard for months ahead. This way, you can maintain a specific regularity of publishing your content that will keep your profiles relevant.
For example, you can set everything up to achieve very specific goals and help your team work on very specific tasks. From HR to task management to marketing to sales, all of these can be managed from one place which is your team’s personal Monday dashboard. The platform itself is marketed as a tool to help you achieve maximum productivity.
Last but not least, Noizio is a tool that will help you become more productive by using unconventional methods. As the name suggests, Noizio deals with noise, or rather, sounds that are meant to help you concentrate on your work better. You can choose between dozens of different sounds of nature and music to help you focus and be more productive at work. It’s a great way to relax while also directing your efforts to achieve a specific goal.
Fyle is an expense management software that lets you take end-to-end control of organization-wide business expenses. It simplifies the expense tracking process for employees by letting them submit their expense reports from applications they use every day like G-suite, Slack, Outlook, etc. Additionally, Fyle also enforces compliance by automating pre-submission checks. This makes the reimbursement process for Finances teams a breeze, as they no longer have to check every submitted report against company policy manually.
Monday, a remote teamwork dashboard, is a pretty useful tool for every business that wants to streamline its workflow. The platform is very customizable and meant to meet the specific needs of very different businesses using it.
All in all, there are quite a few productivity tools you might want to try to help your team become more efficient and productive. All of these are ideal for professional use, so it’s good to try them out to find what works best for you.
Ana Mayer is a freelance writer who is a qualified specialist in the field of digital marketing.
