These days, everyone and everything seems to be competing for attention. In fact, we are vying for your attention right now and asking you to read this article.
As such, employees are dealing with new challenges as they try to increase productivity and output at work.
It was much more difficult to hide reading a newspaper at your desk than it is to hide watching YouTube videos during your lunch break.
Did you know the average employee is interrupted from their work 56 times a day? And that the average employee spends 2 hours a day recovering from interruptions?
While we can’t help you get rid of all possible interruptions, we can provide you with a list of productivity tools to help you make the most of your time on the clock.
These cover everything from project management and task management to email marketing and file storage. This way you can spend less time figuring out how you’re going to get something done – and focus your effort on just doing it.
The Best Productivity Tools For Business
Podio
Podio is a well-known project management platform. It can be customized to meet the needs of your projects and workflow.
There are a number of templates and Integrations available. If you want to use the same project management tool as major brands, then you should know NFL, Sony, and Volvo are among Podio’s well-known clients.
Everything is organized into workspaces, which include projects and apps that can be heavily customized to create templates based on your needs.
Beyond assigning tasks and due dates, chat features allow for real-time communication when multiple users are actively using the system. You can also use it as a time tracker, to track time you spend on projects, and handle employee timesheets.
Podio connects to other services, with plenty of options available out-of-the-box including Microsoft Office 365, Dropbox and Microsoft Evernote.
There are also a number of extensions available to further customize Podio though most of them charged an additional fee. Even the free version offers unlimited storage for files.
Other project management tools include Asana, Trello, and Wrike.
Dropbox
If you want a quick and easy cloud storage solution outside of Google Drive, then Dropbox offers exactly what you need.
Create folders for each of your outsourced contractors to share their content with you. Install the desktop version and receive a notification each time a new file is added to any of your folders on the platform.
Hemingway Editor
Your business needs clean, clear, and compelling copy to reach your customers.
Even if you Outsource your writing to a group of Freelancers or an agency, it’s still a wise choice to check it against errors and to ensure readability.
Hemingway Editor is a free digital online tool to check your writing against common grammar errors, see is readability, and more.
Following the suggestions it gives you and editing the copy will produce higher quality work for you to share on your blog or as part of your other digital marketing efforts
PLANERGY
If your business has to procure anything to run smoothly, PLANERGY is the ideal solution. It makes it easy to manage your supplier relationships and automate everything in the purchase to pay process.
It streamlines everything for you are accounts payable department so invoices are paid quickly and efficiently.
This not only keeps your business running smoothly but ensures your suppliers and other partners are also happy. In some cases, you may even be able to leverage it for service discounts to save your company even more money.
Shift
Shift is a highly regarded productivity tool that helps streamline workflows. It is particularly helpful for people who have to log in and out of multiple accounts.
Shift is a desktop app that integrates with a number of other services and allows you to be logged into multiple accounts from one service all in a single app.
Using shift gives you single-click access to more than 800 of the web’s most popular extensions, mail accounts, applications, and cloud services.
It works with Gmail, Facebook, Messenger, Shopify, Buffer, and many other tools you’re already using throughout the course of business.
It offers an all-in-one solution so you aren’t wasting time closing apps and signing in and out of accounts all day.
Insightly
Insightly is a customer relationship management tool that helps to identify potential sales opportunities.
This tool makes it easy to analyze your sales funnel and make sure you’re using it to its full potential.
You can also use it to improve customer service by linking it with your sales and customer support teams.
It can also be used to keep track of all your interactions with all of your customers and ultimately improve your service.
Zapier
When you’re running a business, every minute of every day counts. The more time you lose to manual processes, the less productive you are in the long run.
Zapier is an automation tool that allows you to manage and automate nearly anything you do online. It integrates with thousands of popular web services so you can stitch together a workflow based on your company requirements.
For example, Gmail users can use it to send automatic replies. It’s also possible to configure social media “zaps” to send one piece of content to another social media network just by posting on one site.
With it, you also have a streamlined way she was scheduled meetings, send reminders for any tasks that need to be completed, categorize important emails, sync your files across multiple cloud services and more.
If you’re not in position to pay for Zapier, you can use IFTTT, to do many of the same tasks. It’s a bit more limited in terms of the apps it integrates with but can accomplish many of the same tasks.
Canva
Just like content creation is an important part of your marketing efforts, so is creating visual assets to accompany your materials both online and off. Canva is a platform that makes it easy to design everything from social media images to flyers and business cards.
If you don’t have the budget for a professional graphic designer, you can get started with Canva Pro for just $12.95/user/month, where you can store your brand assets to create material quickly and easily.
Share designs across your team. Order printed materials as needed.
Yesware
Yesware is sales software that provides all you need to prospect, schedule meetings, and follow up. It offers email analytics and tracking, so you can see when your emails have been opened and make data-driven decisions about the course of action you should take next.
It also features templates that can be saved and shared across team members, along with campaigns where you can set goals. It integrates with Salesforce and LinkedIn Sales Navigator to help streamline your workflow while creating authentic relationships with prospects.
The key to maximizing productivity is to streamline and automate as much of your workflow as possible.
Slack
Team communication is crucial for your productivity. Slack aims to make it simpler for everyone.
You can organize your employees into groups within the single platform so you can chat anytime and keep your conversation threads in order.
Employee interaction helps improve performance by up to 20%, so Slack provides a wonderful way for remote teams to interact even though they’re all working from different locations.
Microsoft Teams is a powerful alternative more suited to larger enterprises looking for additional control and is ideal if you already use Office 365.
Evernote
Evernote is a note-taking app that is available for every device and operating system, including Mac/iPhone and Android. You can take notes on the fly whether you write them by hand, speak or type them. It helps keep everything organized for you.
You can use the tool to turn some of your notes into a task list to help you improve efficiency. With the WebClipper browser extension, you can save and annotate screenshots in a record amount of time.
Though Evernote offers file storage, it is not a substitute for something like Google Drive or Dropbox that offers file-sharing.
G Suite
G Suite gives you access to Google Docs, Google Sheets (a free program similar to Excel), and all the other tools within Google Drive for your business.
The cloud-based software includes collaboration for your document editing, you can use it to coordinate Google calendars and store files. It is an affordable way to work as part of a remote team with packages starting at $6 per user per month.
If your employees use Gmail for their personal email, they’ll be familiar with it because it offers the same user interface.
CoSchedule
Content production is an integral part of digital marketing. demand for Content increases every day and whether you’re working with in-house writers or an outsourced team, using a content calendar keeps things organized and ensures that content flows freely every day.
CoSchedule is great for content marketing, but it can also be used for general project management, plug management, and social media marketing.
It integrates with a number of other tools you are already using such as WordPress, Google Chrome, and various social media networks to streamline your content creation and promotion processes.
Serpstat
The reality is that all businesses need a great deal of search engine optimization (SEO) to be able to compete and bring in new customers.
For many companies, that means either hiring an SEO or digital marketing agency or trying to manage everything in-house. In-house SEO teams can use Serpstat to conduct keyword research and PPC analysis.
You can conduct a website analysis to see how you’re doing or take a look at the competition.
It also offers backlink analysis, a rank tracker, and a site audit. While it’s not quite as robust as some of the industry heavy-hitters like SEMRush and Ahrefs, but for the money, it is the perfect tool for small businesses on a budget that want quality.
The best thing about these productivity apps is that the majority of them also offer mobile apps to help you stay productive on the go.
If there isn’t a dedicated mobile app, you can still access the tools from the mobile browser on your mobile devices, so you’re not locked to your desktop at the office.
