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Technology 4 Productivity: Online Tools to Boost Performace

August 11, 2013

In the beginning of the movie Iron Man 2, Tony Stark welcomes the world and us, the viewers, to the fictional Stark Expo, a World’s-Fair like celebration of science and gadgetry founded by his father, Howard Stark. The elder Stark appears via old newsreel footage to encourage both the movie audience and us that, “Everything is achievable through technology…better living, robust health, and for the first time in human history, the possibility of world peace.”

Those are heavy ambitions to rest on things as delicate as motherboards and fiber optic cables. Technology is a modern miracle in many respects: computers can perform trillions of calculations in seconds; robotics can help the injured to walk, hear, and see; and via the Internet, families in the far reaches of the globe can hear and see each other instantly.

Here at WorkSmart Consultants, we’re committed to helping you maximize your performance and productivity, at a personal, team and/or organizational level.  To this end, we use and recommend “tech tools” employed by our partners and clients every day.  So it’s only natural that we’d compile a list of the best productivity gizmos, apps, and software to help you get as much as possible out of our fleeting work days (and, to take as much minutia off our plates as we can!).

This blog reviews a sampling of some of the best, most efficient, most affordable productivity technologies available today. We chose four simple criteria for the technology included in this series: 1) how well and how much it increases productivity; 2) how easy it is to use; 3) how much does it cost, and 4)…well, just how darned cool it is!  Let’s dig in!...

Email
For us, any discussion of websites that increase productivity has to begin with Gmail.  Google’s relatively young email service finally caught and surpassed reigning email king Hotmail (Microsoft) late last year; it’s now the world’s most popular webmail client and shows no signs of slowing down. The biggest component of Gmail’s appeal is the fluid interactivity between the email client itself and Google’s other free productivity offerings: Calendar, Tasks, and Google Drive (which features Google Docs, a completely online and completely free Microsoft Office-like productivity suite).

It doesn’t hurt that Google’s Android operating system for mobile devices – now dominating the smartphone market in terms of existing devices and sales – seamlessly integrates with these free online tools. Add even more integration with Google’s industry-standard search engine, upstart social networking site Google+, and mega-popular video-sharing site YouTube (a Google subsidiary since 2006), and you have a true one-stop shop for all things informative, productive, collaborative, and creative. Did we mention that every one of the items listed in the last two paragraphs is free?

Project Management 
For all the things Google’s suite of sites and software do well, there are a great many business-related things they cannot do (or, do without a great deal of tweaking). One of those things is beginning-to-end project management, including real-time task updates via RSS, instant note sharing between collaborators, and contact and customer tracking via CRM integration. Luckily, there are a handful of very affordable options for just this sort of interactivity.

Basecamp is the old man in the room when it comes to online project management, though that in no way means it is behind the times. Basecamp offers task and file sharing, instant messaging and note taking, and time tracking, as well as dozens of other business-related tasks like invoicing, accounting, and reporting through third-party add-ons. And of course, all of these features are accessible on your smartphone or tablet through Basecamp’s array of iOS and Android apps. Basecamp offers a 60-day free trial, with plans for as little as $20/month after that.

Smartsheet is just really, really impressive software. It sells itself to multiple industries (everything from sales to marketing to IT) based on a variety of interconnected tools that includes tracking nearly anything a business could want tracked, including orders, fulfillments, customers, pipelines, expenses, assets, and timesheets, just to name a very important few. If that wasn’t enough, Smartsheet also seamlessly links to online customer relationship management giant Salesforce (currently ranked the most innovative company in America by Forbes), ensuring that people, processes, data, and communications are never more than a touch or swipe away. Naturally, Smartsheet has a powerful iOS app (an Android app is in the works)… oh, and did I mention that Smartsheets are sharable and accessible through a native, free Google App that integrates with Google Drive and Google Docs? Smartsheet offers a free 30-day trial with no credit card, with plans for as little as $15.95/month after that.

If Facebook had a project management tool, that tool would be Do, which is a sly way of saying that Do is real-time, fully-functional, socially-driven productivity software. A subsidiary of Salesforce, Do allows for file, note, task, contact, and calendar sharing, comes with a variety of templates, links to its parent Salesforce and the aforementioned Google suite, and of course has native iOS and Android apps. Unlike the other sites on this list, Do has a “Free Forever” basic tier; premium plans start at $15/month for groups of three users, then graduate up to $100/month for teams of 25.

Honorable Mention
Trello gets a mention here, because it meets the “darned cool” factor for two reasons: one, it’s free for groups of any size; and two, it uses a Pinterest-inspired “note cards on a cork board” motif that is clear, concise, and visually appealing. Trello allows for sharing tasks, notes, calendars and files, and has native iOS and Android apps.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of productivity-enhancing websites; we’ve run out of room to mention DropboxBitrix24, Yast, and Mint.com, to name a few. What sites do you use to help keep your days from getting away from you? Drop us a note and give your suggestions as to what might lead to a future column in the “Technology 4 Productivity” series!

June 9, 2016

Many of us have worked with a bad boss in our lifetime. Remember the micro-manager, the yeller,  the softy, the one who’s never there, and/or the boss who takes all the credit for your work? We've all experienced trials and tribulations working under these leadership styles. "It’s frustrating," we say to ourselves, "but that's life." What if, though, we could somehow magically transform supervisors of this sort into competent, inspiring leaders?

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