With so much competition in the marketplace today, a business needs every edge it can get in order to remain competitive and continue to grow successfully. One key to doing this is to always attempt to operate at optimal efficiency, so that productivity is always at a high level and workflow runs smoothly, resulting in a higher ROI and increasing your chances of success. To aid your business in these endeavors, there are a host of different tools that can be utilized to improve efficiency and productivity, as well as help the employees in your company to work better together as a team.
Collaboration is an important factor in the workplace. Employers that can communicate effectively with each other can better produce work properly the first time, with little need for revision and less stress, as well as a higher sense of satisfaction, morale and achievement. To that end, it is worthwhile considering using some of the tools mentioned below if you don’t already have them in place.
1. Mobile Wireless Hot Spots
How many of your employees utilize mobile devices? Chances are quite a few, and chances are many of them use their mobile devices for work related activities. By setting up mobile wireless hot spots within your company grounds, you can enable your employees to work more effectively from anywhere in the office.
2. Cloud printing, tasking and document sharing
Expanding upon the above suggestion, it is wise to utilize cloud-based applications such as Dropbox and Google Drive to share documents with groups of people, who can also edit them and print them directly from the Cloud without them having to be manually sent directly to an individual’s PC. Taking advantage of the benefits of the cloud can result in time saved and smoother workflow. It is especially useful when an employee needs access to documents from someone who might be out of the office. So long as the documents are stored in the cloud, they can be easily accessed without jumping through hoops trying to contact the other individual.
There are also cloud based apps for assigning tasks and projects, which can be viewed by anyone designated so that team members can more easily track progress, see who is focusing on what tasks, and provide updates or pose additional suggestions. WorkZone is one such app that is easy to use and lets you define a wide number of criteria in assigning and prioritizing tasks.
3. Smart Phone Systems
Today’s business phones need to do much more than simply make phone calls. A smart phone system like the Switch business phone system is an ideal tool for many businesses that wish to gain more understanding of their business, increase leads, and better communicate with clients, customers and vendors. The Switch business phone system is vendor operated, meaning that you can rely on Switch to always ensure that your phone system is working properly. But more useful than that are the many tools and functions provided with this innovative phone system that helps you to better analyze your business so that you can see where improvements might be made, leading to better success with clients. The Switch business phone system also enables you to easily transfer calls to mobile devices, so that you can always reach employees that may be out of the office.
4. Sourcing Solutions
Depending upon what type of business you have, you may need to find quotes, images, facts and statistics for a variety of projects. This can be a large drain on time, sometimes yielding very little for your efforts. But there are a wide host of programs that help you achieve your goals and produce much better results than simple browser searches.
Creative Commons is a great tool for finding images, while Brainy Quote can help you find many relevant quotes for whatever you may be looking for. And for find facts or statistics, you can take advantage of Factbrowser, which searches through the web in a much more comprehensive manner to find whatever facts you may need.
5. Conferencing Applications
Chances are your company has a meeting every now and then, with employees and with clients. Getting everyone together for a meeting sometimes can be quite a chore, even with something as simple as a telephone conference. With conferencing apps, you can make the task much easier. A good conferencing app can set up a meeting within minutes, with a large group of people, and enable you to conference from anywhere using mobile devices so that no one has to actually be in the office sitting around one phone or computer monitor. Additionally, these apps can also be used for training purposes or showcasing new products.
