Businesses constantly require solutions to outwit and outsmart competition. If its not the competition then its keeping the employees and contractors on the same page.
There are a plethora of business solutions that help with collaboration, meetings, expenses, accounting, social media management, payments, and cloud storage. And, this is exactly what we’ll be discussing here.
With the advancements in SaaS, you already know that if a solution doesn’t offer a mobile app, its considered a weakness. But a greater problem is when these Apps have a poor user experience.
We’ve collected a bunch of useful services that help streamline processes and provide better sharing among employees and contractors.
Team Communication & Collaboration – Microsoft Teams
Our first suggestion is Microsoft Teams.
Its Free, secure, available on all platforms and devices, embedded with Chat, Audio & Video Calling, Collaboration, 10GB Storage, screen sharing, and 250+ integrated apps & services; all on free plan.
To repeat, the free version I’m speaking of has all the above features.
For paid plans starting from $5/Month… Microsoft Teams gives a plethora of other valuable features making it perhaps the only robust solution that includes all the collaboration and calling features that several put together have.
Its a great tool for keeping all the team members focused with the help of Chats, Teams and Meetings functionality.
Not only can team members have their own one-on-one chats but channels can be created for teams to collaborate on.
Meetings can be scheduled within company and with anyone. If you have to collab with someone who is not on Teams, just invite them via email and they can be part of the calls and screen sharing experience.
Teams is a great replacement tool for Skype calls. Your meetings are secure, the conversations are in one place and all the shared files and folders are easily accessible too.
The iOS and Android Apps are fantastic and very much aligned with UX you see on desktop version.
With Microsoft Teams paid license you automatically get 1 TB of storage space. This is more than enough to get by.
Let’s talk about integrations.
Microsoft Teams has over 250+ integrations. You can connect with several solutions that you are already used to.
Invoicing & Expenses: FreshBooks
Businesses – regardless of size – need to be able to track where their money goes. A software that keeps a record of the invoices and expenses is the solution for this. It is easier, safer, and quicker.
You can pay or collect your invoices via online payments and send reminders too. FreshBooks have an option where you can create invoices within seconds and share them with clients you’re working with.
Rather than keeping a list of receipts, just log all your expenses on FreshBooks to keep track of every penny you’ve spend. It also provides a detail report to keep a check on your finances.
Other than that, track the time you spend working on projects to get paid the right amount.
Collaborate on different projects and stay connected with the team to organise things and follow the schedules.
Social Media Management: CoSchedule
Using a tool like CoSchedule for managing social media makes sense for several reasons.
The 3 products they offer; Blog Calendar, Marketing Calendar & Marketing Suite, are all great and include everything a business requires to get going with social media management.
Their marketing calendar helps to schedule and monitor social campaigns and shares easily. It is capable of scheduling posts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.
Coschedule has a fancy re-queue tool which enables you to re-queue the same social media message on on the same platform after a set duration. You can change this duration and enable Re-queues for as many times as you want.
To get the most out of their tool we recommend using the “social message optimizer” to improve on the messages.
Coschedule helps organising & creating content as well. Its headline analyzer is perhaps one of the more fantastic features. Apart from that the web editor can help get writers chalk out their articles and publish directly on to WordPress with the help of integrations.
Starting at $19/Month, Coschedule has a 14 day free trial that you can use to take them for a test run. Or if you want, you can request a demo to get a better understanding of their tools.
Payment Solution: Payoneer
A perfect solution for businesses and freelancers is Payoneer. It has everything in one place. You signup for a bank account in a currency you want. Once verified, you can the bank details and order your Mastercard.
Payoneer platform makes it easier for you to handle payments to or from international clients. This means you can work with clients all over the world, be it directly or using freelance websites and get paid in USD, EURO, CAD and several other currencies.
Several other perks of Payoneer are that you can easily withdraw the money in to your local bank, you can get paid into your Payoneer account via PayPal, it provides services to pay for VAT and you handle multiple stores in one place.
You can track your payments through the store manager option by connecting your Payoneer account and get details for transfer.
Screen Recording: Screencast-O-Matic
Screencast-O-Matic offers screen recording and sharing for a better feedback, and tutorial purpose.
While using the tool you can edit the videos by adding texts, insert drawings, cropping and focusing more on one object and, use the green screen filter.
There’s more to this solution, normally if you were using another software, either it would not have an option to add audio in it or would lack features but here you can easily import music and narration from the computer, develop scripts and create captions.
All of the work that you do on Screencast-O-Matic is saved as a MP4 file by default that you can edit later.
For an organisation it has two different plans one with given features and other is customised.
Note Taking
Evernote for business is a good tool for organising ideas, tracking projects, and ensuring everyone’s on the same page.
The paid version allows restoring notes that may have previously been removed, preventing any loss of viable ideas.
The app allows voice recording notes which comes very handy in meetings.
All in One Solution – Microsoft 365
Getting Microsoft 365 home or business is a great investment.
Microsoft 365 includes all the productivity apps which you could use online or download them on your desktops, laptops & mobile whenever you want.
Apart from your own custom email address, you get the full license to use Office suite on all devices & platforms.
All the tools by Microsoft are useful. For instance, you can easily keep in touch with your coworkers through Microsoft Teams or Skype for business to share your screen, edit files, and attend meetings through them.
Your note taking becomes a breeze with One Note & To-Do. Use them for tracking, taking notes, and making lists etc.
You get a whopping 1 Terabyte of online cloud storage with OneDrive. You can store and share the files easily across devices, platforms and people.
Google might have the same tools, but Microsoft is better, safer, quicker and supremely organised. Did we mention the safer part?
Microsoft Office has different plans for business and personal use so take a look at them all before investing.
When it comes to cloud based apps for helping improve a business, there are going to be services that will need an upgrade or a paid plan to suit your team more.
We have used all these services and feel they are very much needed in establishing seamless connection and productivity.
Hi,
I totally agree with your point “cloud-based apps can improve business”.
The rise in cloud apps for business has been made possible by the provision of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platforms running through cloud services.
It’s crazy how many tasks can be done via the cloud. I work with Blue Fox Group, and we also make use of Buffer for social media management, we schedule posts ahead of time and it has been extremely useful to us.
Hi,
I totally agree with your point “cloud-based apps can improve business”. I want to share one more cloud-based service and that is a virtual phone number of callhippo with this, you can call everywhere. its cheaper than the traditional phone system.