Increase Your Productivity With These Great Business Apps

It’s amazing to think that a decade ago, the Blackberry dominated the business mobile phone market due to it’s qwerty keyboard and email access so central to it’s design. However, times have moved on an now many businesses give their senior employees mobile phones in order to increase their productivity wherever they are in the world. This is great, as it enables them to perform a wide variety of tasks such as arrange travel, communicate with their teams and even create documents in office software. Now everyone essentially has a fast, pocket-sized touch screen computer in their hands the only thing preventing you from achieving your potential is the types of apps that you have on it. Let’s check them out.

Resource Tracking Apps

As a manager, you’ll want information on the fly about how your department or business is doing. This improves transparency and gives you insight into performance, even when you’re not at your desk. Apps like Enterprise Resource Planners and Customer Relationship Management tools can help you to provide direction to your employees and help assess priorities to maximise productivity. You can also get expense tracking apps to keep an eye on costs to ensure they’re not hitting your bottom line too hard, which makes it a great business app.

Communication Apps

Of course, these are key business applications and play a huge part in the way you effectively communicate with your team. Email is now something you no longer need your computer for, with great applications like Gmail that help you to respond on the move, quicker than ever. If an email just won’t do and you need to speak to them face to face, then Skype allows you to do this. Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 and it’s now integrated into their Office 365 package, making it more accessible than ever. There’s also others such as social networking sites designed specifically for the work place and instant messaging which is great for creating group chats to communicate with your whole team at once.

Payment Apps

Do you remember a time when you had to type in your 4-digit chip and pin in order to make a purchase? You might even remember a time when you had to sign on the dotted line every time you wanted to use your card. Instead now, you can use a mobile app with your card details stored to pay for goods, with the use of NFC technology. This means that with apps like PayPal and Apple Pay, you can pay for things much more rapidly by tapping your phone at the point of sale, allowing you to allocate your time to more important things.

Travel Apps

If you’re in corporate management, you’ll understand how much effort it is to keep track of all your travel arrangements. Flight comparison apps allow you to find the cheapest flights and the Booking.com allows you to quickly find the best accommodation for you. You can track the flight to identify any delays so you don’t have to waste time in airports and once you get to your destination, you can find your way around with Google Maps and Google Translate, so you can save time navigating and more time doing what you went there to do!

Mind-Mapping Apps

Sometimes writing your ideas down on paper helps to add structure and turn them into plans. Sometimes though, getting a pen and paper out just isn’t practical, so it’s far better to use one of the many apps on the market that allow you to quickly create mind maps. By using one of these apps, you can quickly get your ideas down so you won’t forget them, but then start to think about more important things and be more productive in your job.

Office Productivity Apps

These apps are relevant for everyone and can work wonders on productivity. Calendar apps are great for creating accurate schedules to ensure that you’re in the right place at the right time and do not miss an important meeting with a client. Cloud storage and SharePoint apps can help you share information and work collaboratively with team mates, irrespective of location which of course increases productivity and often reduces travel costs. Timesheet apps make physically clocking in a thing of the past, which saves additional time and erases this archaic practice. Not forgetting that the incredibly popular Microsoft Office Suite is now available for mobile platforms,