The term “productivity tools for business” refers to any of the various tools that can contribute to increasing efficiency. These may include paper clamps, clipboards, staplers, marking pens, staplers, scissors, binder clips and so on. Other types of productivity tools include hand-held tape measures and rulers.
Here are some productivity tools in business which are very much in demand. The good thing about this is that you don’t have to worry about the product or company getting outdated or discontinued because they tend to last longer than other brands.
Keep Your Inbox Clean with Unroll.me
Have you ever subscribed to an email list only to regret it later, when you realize how much spam they send you? Oh, and on top of that, you have a bunch of those kinds of emails. And, on top of that, you start to lose track of your important emails in your cluttered inbox… of course, that’s not you.
But it was me.
And while Gmail does a nice job of separating out promotional emails from your core inbox, it can still be overwhelming to see thousands of unread emails in your inbox.
And, if you use an external mail client like Microsoft Office or Apple Mail… fuggedaboutit. You can almost feel the lost business productivity viscerally.
That’s where unroll.me comes in.
This little gem of an app scans your inbox and creates a list of all your subscription emails.
From that one view, you can quickly unsubscribe from emails you don’t want anymore.
For emails that you do want,you can add them to your rollup, which consolidates the clutter into 1 daily digest instead of a bazillion random emails.
Of course, if there are some emails you still want to see individually in your inbox, you can choose to do that too.
Whatever you choose, this service is free and incredibly easy to set up. It’ll take 10-15 minutes to do your initial sort, but after that, you can say goodbye to inbox clutter and just maintain your unroll.me digest once a quarter or so (depending on your preferences).
This business productivity app is a no-brainer.
Streamline Appointment Setting with Calendly
Here’s an email thread I’m sure you’ve never had:
Me: Hi Duke, great to meet you at the event last night. Want to grab coffee next week? Shoot me some days and times that work for you and we’ll get it scheduled.
Duke: Awesome! Great to meet you too. Unfortunately, next week is tight, but I could do 9:30 on Thursday or Friday. That work?
Me: Shoot. I’m out of town those two days. How about the following week, Wednesday?
Duke: Hmm, I could maybe do 11:30…
Ugh.
The thread gets longer and the cumulative emails of this sort eventually clutter your inbox. But, you can’t unroll them because, well, they’re real emails.
For this problem, we recommend Calendly.
With Calendly, you simply send a link to your contact, they select a time that works for them, and it books you automatically.
For example, let’s say you wanted to schedule a free, 15-minute consultation with me on how you could improve your website’s speed, performance, search, security, or optimization.
We could start an email exchange, interspersed with texts and voicemail, or, you could simply choose a timeslot that’s available from the widget below:
Calendly integrates with your Google calendar (another reason to use the G Suite!) and automatically filters out times you are unavailable, which prevents double-booking.
You can also set it up so that you only have a limited number of appointments per day, limit which days and times you’re available altogether (for instance, I don’t take appointments on the weekends), build in buffers (I require at least 15 minutes between meetings to allow for preparation and/or drive time), and more.
It’s free to use for 1 event type, and only $8/user/month if you need unlimited event types.
I guarantee you’ll save that in your next back-and-forth.
Apple Shortcuts
Free on iOS devices
Apple Shortcuts is among the best productivity apps for anyone with an iPhone or iPad. This app lets you create automations, that is, a series of events that happens automatically when you trigger it. For example, you can make one that says, “When I arrive at work (based on GPS), automatically put my phone on silent.” Another one could be, “When I stop my phone’s Wake-Up alarm, then play a morning news podcast.” Even if you know nothing at all about programming, you can create some time-saving shortcuts with this app.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking
$150 for Home edition
If you’ve caught on that dictating, rather than typing and mousing, can boost your productivity, then you ought to give Dragon NaturallySpeaking a try. It’s the best and most accurate dictation software we’ve ever used. The program comes in a few different editions that are designed to handle specific terminology and formats, such as Dragon Legal Individual and Dragon Law Enforcement. The Home edition is a good pick for general use. It’s not cheap, but it’s the best dictation software on the market. Give yourself a few days to learn how to drive Dragon, and you’ll be a master in no time.
Evernote
Free; from $7.99 per month for paid accounts
Evernote is a note-taking app with a variety of uses. You can keep important ideas in it, anything from a list of recommended books to your personal catalog of recipes. With Evernote, you can capture notes by writing, recording audio, taking photos, uploading PDFs, sketching digitally, and more. One of Evernote’s selling features is that when you search for a word or phrase, the app looks not only in your text but also for pictures of the words in images. That means, if you snap a picture of a For Sale sign and later search for “sale,” Evernote will find it. Paying account holders can search PDFs and other uploaded documents from instances of words as well. Although we’ve listed Evernote as a “personal productivity” app rather than one for collaboration, you certainly can use it with a group to share notes and collectively create and edit them.
ClickUp
This project management tool is designed to help you manage everything in one place, from to-do lists to entire projects. In ClickUp, you can set goals and break them into individual tasks, which is ideal for a professional interested in moving to the next level. You can customize the interface to meet your personal preferences, which works well for some people. For others, though, that flexibility can feel a bit overwhelming.
To reduce some of that impact, experts have some hacks that can help you make the most of the tool. One of those hacks is to batch your to-do list so that you’re completing similar items in the same go. If you need to dive into your email to accomplish one task, for instance, you can gather other tasks you’ll do while in your inbox and do everything at once to maximize your productivity.
ProofHub
Using technology to manage your teams, tasks, and projects is great, but having to use too many different tools for all this can be quite cumbersome. ProofHub is an all-in-one project, task, and team management software with amazing collaboration capabilities that simplifies everything. With this online project management and team collaboration software, you can plan your projects like a pro, manage your tasks and teams effortlessly, collaborate with teams and clients without any hassle, and stay in ultimate control of everything.
You can create tasks with deadlines and assign them to team members in a jiffy. Create custom workflows using kanban boards and keep things moving. There are Gantt charts to give you a visual timeline for projects and how they are progressing. Start collaborating with your teams by creating discussion topics and brainstorm together. It even has a built-in chat app to keep all your communications centralized. If you work in a team you already know how valuable an online team collaboration software can be. Plus, the real-time notifications for project updates keep everyone always informed of what’s happening in the projects. In all, ProofHub has got everything that a modern-day team requires to accomplish tasks and meet project deadlines while staying connected with each other and collaborating like a breeze.
Office 365
You may not realize it, but the tools you need may already be available in the apps you use every day. If you’re paying for Office 365, you may as well get the most out of it. One of the best features of some versions of Office 365 is that you can access your files across multiple devices. Install a copy on your phone and work on that PowerPoint presentation while you’re stuck in traffic or in the waiting room of the dentist’s office. While you’re doing that, though, there are a few other productivity boosters built into Office 365.
- Microsoft Flow – There are things you do every day that zap your time and energy. Flow lets you automate those tasks, creating “workflows” that run while you’re doing other things. You can save email attachments to OneDrive, send an approval request when new items are uploaded to your SharePoint list, get email forecasts, sync files with Dropbox, and much more.
- MyAnalytics – How much time do you waste each day on social media? What percentage is devoted to reading and responding to email? MyAnalytics runs in the background, learning your work patterns and making suggestions for improvements you can make to work smarter, not harder.
- Teams – If your work involves more than just you, Teams can help. You can chat, meet, call, and collaborate directly within the app. If you have employees who need to log their time, you’ll love the included Shifts app (not to be confused with our own Shift app), which lets you add shifts and have employees sign up for them.
1CRM
While project management and office tools will boost your productivity, your entire team will benefit the most from an all-in-one CRM. If you’re ready to take your small business past the never-ending spreadsheets and shared documents, an all-in-one CRM is the next step. A central hub to manage all of your sales leads and customers in the cloud will save both time and money.
With 1CRM you can manage every aspect of your small business. From a complete CRM with team collaboration, lead forms and ecommerce integration to a customer-connection portal and marketing automation you can manage your entire sales and workflow. 1CRM is a great way to streamline your sales cycle, track every customer from beginning to end, nurture your contacts, and reduce costs while increasing revenue.
5. Gmail Templates
You may think of Gmail as a productivity zapper since you probably find notifications disrupting you just as you start to get work done. But what if there was a way you could make Gmail work for you rather than against you? We have it. It’s called Templates, and it’s a little-known feature that lets you save templates for frequently-sent responses to call upon whenever you need them.
Here’s how you get templates working:
- Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of your Gmail inbox. Choose Settings.
- Select Advanced.
- Scroll down to Templates and select Enable. Save changes.
- Start a new Email. Compose the body of the email and click on the three dots in the bottom-right corner. Here you can give the template a name and save it.
- Now that you have your template, whenever you need to respond or send a new email using it, you’ll simply click on the three dots and select Templates, then choose the desired template from the list. Create multiple templates to cover the emails you send most often.
Google Keep
Gmail users should also look into Google Keep, which integrates with the popular email tool. When you add reminders to Google Keep, you’ll see them in your inbox, ensuring you won’t forget about them. Once you’ve created a reminder, you’ll see the Keep icon to the right of your inbox, where Google stores all the apps you use frequently for easy access. Just click on the Keep icon to see all the notes you’ve left for yourself.
But the best thing about Keep is that you can put a due date on your reminders that will ensure you never forget anything. Set the date and time you want to be reminded and it will show up in your inbox, along with your email messages. You can also color code your tasks to help you see immediately whether a reminder is related to work, personal, or a particular project or person.
Google Hangouts
Another great tool for Gmail users is Google Hangouts, which makes it easy for you to chat with your teams, whether through text or video. Hangouts is transitioning to Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet for G Suite users, but the basic premise remains the same. The tool lets you and your team gather in one place to save you the time and expense involved in bringing all your workers together in one place.
But there are also ways to get even more out of Google’s collaboration tool. You can go to Settings and Chat in Gmail, then select Chat On. When you select Save Changes, you’ll see a list of your chat group options on the right while in your Gmail inbox. You can invite team members to a Hangout by clicking on the plus sign above that list. This will help you stay in touch with your team members, clients, and colleagues directly within your inbox.
Conclusion
You want to create more time in your life. To do this to best effect, you need to identify the physical productivity tools that are best suited to your work style. Some are better for creative pursuits while others are better for analytical tasks. Take the time to understand which building blocks will help you achieve your goals.