Did you know that 75% of American workers don’t believe they have access to the tech they need to be efficient?
Sharing project tasks, quick communication, client collaboration, feedback, and more are all bottlenecks in workflow. Well, not anymore. There’s a variety of solutions at your fingertips that can eliminate common business pain points.
Give your team and clients the ability to connect, collaborate, and bring projects to fruition at lightning speed. Here’s how with the latest and greatest productivity tech for 2018 can streamline your business.
Do You Have Team Collaboration Issues?
Collaboration is the foundation to any productive team. If your team’s collaboration is grinding productivity to a snail’s pace, it’s time to give them the tools needed to develop powerful team collaboration.
Problem Solved: Hard to Navigate UI
User Interface (UI) is essential to delivering an easy to navigate site on the user end. One of the biggest issues with providing powerful UI elements is team collaboration on UI projects.
For UI design projects, Figma is a must when it comes to 2018 productivity tech. Teams can easily collaborate and share UI design projects with this browser based interface design tool.
You and your team can intricately design vector based UI projects, share, comment, edit, and keep everything stored in one place. Cloud connected, designers can work side-by-side on projects simultaneously, regardless where they are in the world.
Problem Solved: Inefficient Communication
Bringing digital projects to fruition means getting everyone involved communicating and working in sync. Zeplin can make collaboration between your design team and development team smoother and more efficient.
For instance, designers can upload visuals via a desktop app like Photoshop or Sketch, adding it to their Zeplin project folder. Then developers can get into the specs, margins, colors, and other branding elements with ease. Both teams can collaborate, comment and share feedback faster, creating a perfect storm of productivity.
Is Team Workflow Productivity a Problem?
Workflow is another common productivity issue. From increased switching times between platforms, inboxes, and getting remote team members synced up with HQ can all inhibit positive workflow. The following workflow tools will change all that!
Problem Solved: Time Wasted Switching Apps
How many apps do you and your team use daily? Switching from app to app can eat up a lot of time, but with Zapier, you can get all your apps in one place to streamline workflow.
Zapier lets you connect more than 750 apps and services to automate and move daily information between them. For example, you can upload project files sent to you via email to your team’s Dropbox. There are even Slack alerts and task history features as well.
Problem Solved: Making Notes on Visual Designs
Do you want to speed up digital workflow in an intuitive way? Red Pen is an innovative and productive way to do just that, especially if you and your team work with visuals on the daily. With Red Pen, you can review and markup any project quickly and efficiently.
This new productivity tech for 2018 is easily accessible as well. Being a web-based platform, your team and clients can work on and provide feedback in minutes from anywhere in the world. There are even audio comments and drag and drop features simplifying the process.
Problem Solved: Distractions
The dings, vibrations, and popup notifications are distractions that eat away at productivity. Freedom, a productivity tech solution can block those distractions for you and your team easily while trying to meet those important deadlines.
For example, you can set specific time ranges during the day to eliminate those problematic notifications, or social media and email inbox urges. Its power is in its simplicity, available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Windows desktop. Now you can cut down on distractions and switching time for a more focused workflow.
Problem Solved: Scanning Documents into PDFs
Evernote is no stranger to developing new tech for productivity and efficient workflow solutions. Evernote Scannable is one of their best for scanning important documents. From client contracts to financials, you can scan and turn any document into a professional PDF.
This mobile app detects edges and makes high quality images every time. If you use Evernote, you can save your scanned documents to their platform, as well as other storage locations and platforms.
Problem Solved: Setting Your Schedule
Creating the most efficient and productive daily schedule is essential for business on any scale. RescueTime is a time tracking tool that tracks and analyzes the websites you visit, apps you use, and even breaks you take during the workday.
With a clear picture of where your time goes each day, you can set up the most efficient schedule for you and your team. Block those distracting sites, apps, and more to stay hyper-focused on productivity goals.
Can’t Get Everyone in the Same Room and On the Same Page?
If you have multiple teams spread across the globe, you know just how hard it is to get everyone on the same page. This can slow productivity, project completion, and client delivery times. But with a bit of innovative tech, you can easily get everyone in the same virtual meeting, and on the same page quickly.
Problem Solved: Video Conferencing
Zoom is known as one of the top video and web conferencing tools available to businesses of all sizes. If communication is a chore for your team, Zoom is an easy to use fix.
Conduct online meetings with teams and clients based anywhere in the world. Video conference with contractors and consultants. Connect via group messaging to hash out project details. Doing it all from one software-based conference room.
Problem Solved: Remote Brainstorming
It can be difficult gathering the team and clients for collaboration meetings, especially if you have remote workers. But with Mural, you can get everyone together via the cloud with ease.
Mural provides digital whiteboards for you, your team, and clients to discuss projects, brainstorm fresh ideas, collaborate, and organize next steps. This must have productivity tech for 2018 saves time getting everyone on the same page, increasing workflow and maximizing project timelines.
Is Sifting Through Emails Challenging?
Checking emails is probably the most time consuming task. How many emails do you walk into every Monday? How many times do you check your email per day? Chances are, your inbox, and the inboxes of your team is pounding productivity into the ground. These email tools can help!
SaneBox
Sorting through emails can be a very time consuming endeavor, especially on Mondays. Luckily there is productivity tech that automates the process, freeing hours a week up for you and your team. Enter SaneBox, a platform that prioritizes every email received.
You can set up SaneBox for Google, Office365, Yahoo, Outlook, Apple iCloud, and more. This platform automatically your email into tidy folders, such as spam or important emails you need to reply to. You can even send emails to your future self.
Help Scout
Improving the customer experience is on every businesses to-do list in 2018. Help Scout is a timely tech solution that can be easily integrated to improve customer experience.
Normally all customer emails go into one inbox, and checking that inbox can be a time consuming and daunting task. Not to mention that solutions to customer issues are never one size fits all.
Help Scout allows you to create a shared inbox to get the entire team on the same page. This allows you and your team to discuss the best action prior to replying to the customer. You can even manage multiple brands from one account.
Need a More Mobile Team?
Having a mobile workforce can increase efficiency and productivity. But how do you keep your mobile workforce exchanging information, project files, feedback, and other important productivity aspects in the best way possible? The following mobile-minded productivity tools can get everyone working together across multiple devices, from anywhere in the world.
TeamViewer
Going mobile can make your team more productive. TeamViewer is a secure remote program that makes going mobile for work simple. Its main draw is the ability for workers to access their office computer via home laptop, mobile device, or tablet.
You and your team can drag and drop files to multiple devices and share projects and tasks on the go. Video calls, tech support, urgent client issues, and more can all be quickly achieved regardless if you or your team is in the office or not.
Pushbullet
The variety of devices used by you, your team, and clients can pose challenges for businesses these days. Not everyone uses iCloud, but Pushbullet makes sharing and syncing your team and clients across multiple devices easy.
This iPhone app and browser extension allows teams to quickly sync up different operating systems to send images, Google Map info, links, documents, and more. A real time saver that makes sharing and syncing more efficient.
Is Your Creative Team Highly Productive?
What’s the status of your creative team? One of the biggest snags in productivity can be in the creative department. Content can sit idle for days while an image or graphic is developed. Not anymore!
Snagit
Graphics and videos can be another very time consuming task for social media managers and content teams. Think of all the hours spent grueling over simple details on Photoshop.
With Snagit graphics, videos, and gifs can be quickly created and edited. This productivity solution lets you take screenshots, record video, add effects, and share creatives quickly with the rest of the team.
Need One Productivity Tool For Everything?
To develop a truly productive team, you need a variety of features in a single tool. This can keep platform and app switching time to a minimum while giving your team a variety of tools just one click away.
All-in-One Solution: Gryffin Media App
The Gryffin App is an all-in-one productivity tool that lets team members communicate, collaborate, and efficiently bring projects and tasks to fruition. Individualized project access, project and task management, team member project allocation, in-app messaging system, email integration, and more make it a must-have productivity tool. Here’s a breakdown of the unique features that allow they Gryffin App to address some of the biggest pain points in productivity:
Features:
- Custom Templates. Not every workflow is the same, so why should your project management tool be? Custom templates allow you to adapt the tool based on project types, deadlines, and more. Whether you need to change a workflow based on a client or project, or want to streamline a larger aspect of administration–the Gryffin App allows you the freedom to do it.
- Task Automation. Stop worrying about assigning next steps when you can build tasks into projects from the start. Create efficient, streamlined workflows without wasting time.
- Visibility Controls. When you have teams working across projects or clients you need to collaborate with, control access to conversations, items, and more.
The Gryffin App also lets you and your team to sync projects across devices, share project files and images, as well as deliver feedback without slowing workflow. Instead of working across different apps, keep all of the information you need in one place. The ultimate tech solution is one that consolidates all of your priorities!
There is no shortage of new productivity tech you can integrate into you and your team’s workflow. From team and client collaboration to brainstorming new ideas and projects via digital whiteboards, now you can streamline your business processes for top efficiency. What productivity tech will you use in 2018 for business growth and success?