10 Apps to Help Run Your Small Business On The Go
10 Smartphone Apps to Help Run Your Small Business On The Go
As a small business owner you are inevitably away from your desk and office a lot – meeting with clients, business partners, suppliers, distributors, or simply networking. While you are on the move work still needs get done and that can be a challenge. Orders need to be processed, team tasks completed, cash flow monitored, and customer inquiries reviewed and answered. Fortunately, the evolution of technology has met this challenge and you can effectively run many aspects of your business right from the palm of your hand with your smartphone.
Choosing the right smartphone app for your business can improve individual and team productivity, enhance collaboration with clients, and keep you on top of your finances. To help you sort through the deluge of available smartphone apps for business, here is my pick of 10 apps to remotely manage every aspect of your work day.
1. Time Management – RescueTime (free)
Be more productive with the time you have by identifying your daily time-wasters. Compatible with both Mac and Windows, this app tells you how you spend your time, on websites and applications, via a weekly email report.
2. Evernote – Evernote ($5/mo Premium or $10/mo business user)
This app is by far one of the most utile tools for so many different types of tasks you have and the fact that you can share it with others and use it as a collaboration tool just makes it even more powerful. From keeping lists of things to do, taking images of products or issues you find while on the go, clipping information from web sources, saving contacts and business cards, managing expenses – the possibilities of what you can do with this app are endless.
3. Team collaboration – Asana ($21 per month paid annually for up to five members)
This is one of the most popular productivity apps in the market, ideal for tracking both personal and employee projects. Assign tasks to employees, specify deadlines, automate task reminders, upload files, and communicate on tasks with the person responsible through the inbox feature.
4. Information Storage and Sharing – Dropbox (free for 2GB; $9.99 / month for 1000 GB)
The Dropbox cloud storage app is available for all mobile devices – Blackberry, Windows, Android and iOS. This means that you can store, access, and share your data remotely no matter which smart phone technology you use.
5. Web conferencing – WebEx (free for up to 3 people per meeting)
Although Skype is a popular choice for on-the go video calls and conference calls, I also recommend Cisco’s Webex because of its various presenting features, high quality audio options, and simple interface.
– Send out meeting invites by email, phone or text message.
– Share screens and show powerful presentations/ videos
– Use the polling and whiteboard option to engage the audience
– Hand over control of the discussion to another participant during the webinar