As we face yet another period of change, as business leaders, our ability to adapt to change and preparedness to be agile in our response to opportunities or threats has never been more key to our success.

To achieve this we need to have sharpened our business processes to the optimum so we have spare capacity to adapt to new opportunities.  

In the business world in the UK we are told that our workers are not as efficient as some of our European cousins.  I find that hard to believe, but if we accept it at face value, ok there are plenty of ways we can improve our Productivity and Processes and we see good examples of companies doing that in the UK and USA, every day. However we are also aware that there remain many companies who are still using the tools prevalent 20 years ago which struggle to collaborate, never mind do it on any platform and it be intuitive and easy to work with.

There are many business leaders who are embracing change and helping their workforce to find smarter ways of working. Yet many are still using the same old tools because they are familiar and not because they are the best, which is dramatically limiting the scope of their progress

Recommended Productivity and Efficiency Tools

As a company we are focussed on helping companies to improve their processes, making sure their workers (users) of IT solutions have the best and most intuitive tools to work with. Let us share our recommendations of great software that could help your company make a step change in Business Process improvement…. They are…. Below and all offer a free trial.

The range of Cloud based solutions grows daily but we recommend Smartsheet instead of Excel and Task lists/to do lists that don’t join up and collaborate.

Appsheet which offers the ability to build cost effective Mobile Apps in a day or two, that work on any device and deliver the exact solution you seek by conditional logic. Collaboration for the masses! Costed in £100’s not 10’s of £1000’s.

Data produced by these work management Apps should be viewed in Graphical dashboards so good decisions can be made, based on Real Time Results. Microsoft  Power Bi is one of those Graphical Apps that reads data from any Spreadsheet, so your management finger is on the pulse of your business ready to act on what you see.

For many workers travelling to work or to a meeting is the tradition, rather than best practise. Since our company started working with companies around the world, we have had to embrace the video conference and screen share world.  These tools have improved dramatically, speeding up decision and delivery times, and cutting down on travel time and costs and reducing our carbon footprint.

We currently recommend Zoom.us for conferencing and screen share but equally acknowledge that Skype, Webex, GoToMeeting and Join.me among others achieve good results. Alas Face time is still one to one… at the moment.

If we manage the changes that are affecting us, then we can seize new opportunities as they are presented.  In order to achieve this our Business Processes need to be fully optimised, allowing us to create in our organisations a culture of continuous innovation, safe in the knowledge that our Key Performance Indicators are telling us what we need to know… in Real Time.

The post 4 Tools to increase Productivity and Efficiency appeared first on SmarterBusinessProcesses.

Enterprises are capitalizing on the mobile app phenomenon by building innovative apps to communicate with their staff and to enable them to work anytime, anywhere.

As more and more businesses use enterprise mobility apps to complement their core business, the use of corporate apps will continue to grow. This means more opportunities for mobile app developers and cross platform mobile development experts to test their ideas, skills, and creativity to find their niche in this thriving marketplace.

According to research firm Gartner, by 2017 the demand for such development will increase five times faster than companies and IT departments can keep pace with. With mobile phone sales expected to reach 2.1 billion units in 2019, it will fuel demand for enterprise mobile apps that are just as useful and popular as consumer apps. We look at reasons why.

Customized to business needs

Corporate apps are customized to an organization’s core business needs and there are several use cases, for example, such as helping its field sales and marketing teams effectively present solutions to customers. They also enable staff on the go to access the latest product brochures or information where document management and distribution platforms make sure that employees have up-to-date information when they need it. There is no need to share multiple versions of files and to look for misplaced documents. Staff can gather information from customers and prospects and enter this data into the corporate or customer relationship management databases efficiently. This saves workers time and ensures that they stay in the loop.

Train and develop anywhere, anytime

Such apps deliver learning content to their workers on the go. They are interactive, up-to-date and enable workers to sign up for courses online. This way, employees can learn anytime, anywhere and at their own pace. Workers can also keep up to date with company news and industry developments.

Employee engagement

Employees are already having to pay attention to the emails they get on a daily basis from their co-workers and external customers. A corporate app should not add to this burden.

Do keep in mind the following suggestions when building a corporate app:

• Consider the group of employees you are designing the app for. When creating a product for the public at large, the first step is to consider your audience. The same goes for the corporate app.

• Talk to your staff and find out about the culture of the department, get their feedback and find out what they actually need. It may sound simple to say but until you actually talk to the people who are actually doing the job day in and day out, creating an app you think may help them, may not actually address their needs.

• Build engagement with your employees. If your staff find the apps useful and understand that these will help to make their lives easier, they will want to adopt this into their daily work routine.

• The lives of employees hang on their mobile devices. A good suggestion, at this point, would be to incorporate location services and image capabilities to connect staff and share information more efficiently. Include a variety of media such as interactive, videos and embedded documents. This level of interactivity engages staff, enabling them to be more productive. The best corporate apps work because they enable organizations to engage their employees and to bring productivity increases and faster business processes. The bigger picture is that the organization gains insights (through analytics and such software) into the work habits of its employees, which in the long term, will enable it to fine-tune business processes for greater productivity and rewards. Do your employees work in the field? Give them offline access.

• Keep apps up-to-date so that the latest information and documents can be distributed to the work force so as to ensure that everyone is working on the same digital page. Nothing is more frustrating than spending time working on outdated documents or data.

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