3 great business apps we love
Mobile devices and smartphones have become the norm as one form of personal and business communication. Each new version of the iPhone, iPad, and Samsung or Blackberry products are faster, have more capabilities and continue to drive consumer demand.
They’re visible at tradeshows and events, within the office, or anywhere really; presentations are now often delivered via iPad and documents, texts and emails are being exchanged with greater frequency via smartphone. These devices have proved indispensable, but what really boosts their proficiencies are the apps that are available to them. The variety of business applications for mobile devices is incredible. With a few apps you can store or work or documents from any location on any device, scan and create pdfs with your smartphone, organize, tag and share your work documents of any size with any number of colleagues.
Three reasons why you should use apps in your business is because they are efficient (we like that!), enhance productivity/organization and it can all be done on the go from anywhere. Those are pretty strong motivations to start exploring the multitude of apps that can be applied to your business. Here are 3 apps that we like at CornerStone Dynamics.
Genius Scan – This app essentially turns your smartphone into a scanner. Once captured, you can email the scan as a jpeg or pdf. A nice feature about Genius Scan is that you can build one large pdf document with multiple scans. Both the basic (free) and Plus app ($2.99) allows scanning in black and white or colour, with an enhanced function to make your work look its best. You’re also able to share scans to Twitter and your colleagues, scan business cards, and search, sort and transfer documents to your computer over WiFi. If that’s not enough, you also have the ability to crop and straighten your pages and organize your work with tags (easily accessed from the menu). The enhanced version – Genius Scan+ enables the user to export docs to Box, DropBox, Evernote, Google Drive, SkyDrive and Expensify (more great apps for your business!). You’re even able to print your documents to an AirPrint compatible computer. Genius Scan (both versions) is an excellent way to capture receipts for expense reports. A few uses for Genius Scan include capturing pictures of whiteboards from meetings, archiving receipts, making copies, sharing and storing handwritten notes, creative samples, memos, or book pages. Having a scanner available anywhere in the world can certainly increase employee productivity – Genius Scan is a recommended app for Apple Products.
Evernote – This handy, well designed and easy to use app helps you remember everything across all devices you use – allowing you to stay organized, save your brilliant ideas and improve productivity. This app lets you take notes, capture photos, create to do lists, record voice reminders and upload them to the cloud for easy access and searchability while at home, on the go or at work. Key features include: save, sync and share files, record voice and audio notes, organize notes, create notebooks, tags and share work with friends and co-workers via Facebook and Twitter. There are two versions, a free (60MB a month – a good amount for all your notes) and a Premium version ($5 monthly or $45 annually). The Premium edition provides the additional benefits of taking notebooks offline to access them anytime, allows others to edit your notebooks and has the capability for adding a PIN lock to your app. Evernote is great for research –you’re able to snap pictures of whiteboards or books, draft agendas, organize lists and check things off as you progress. It’s downloadable to your desktop enabling you to access the files and notes you create on your phone. Evernote is available for Mac, PC, iOS and Android phone and tablets.
Dropbox – This is a cloud based application where you can store your files and folders for accessibility at any time. Dropbox lets you bring your photos, documents and videos anywhere you go. All folders are private however, you do have the option of sharing them with other Dropbox users for collaboration and off-site work. The beauty of Dropbox is in the accessibility of files for all of your computers, iphone, ipad and the Dropbox website. Common uses include sharing links to large files (images are easily transferred without a drop in quality) instead of attaching them to email, and adding files to “favourites” for quick and reliable offline viewing. Dropbox provides 2 gigs of free space, but additional room is provided by referring colleagues and friends to join.
This is a quick snapshot of 3 apps that can help you and your employees conduct your business more efficiently. And this is just the tip of the iceberg for useful workplace applications. Whatever your business requirement, there’s an app for that!