If you’re a business owner or plan to be one, you probably spend a lot of time jumping from task to task to meet deadlines while keeping everyone up to date. You might check on quality assurance (QA) test results one day and the status of your latest marketing campaign the next. The good news is that there are great efficiency tools to help make it all a whole lot easier.

Here are some of the must-have digital apps you definitely need to boost your efficiency.

Communicating With Your Team: Slack

In today’s business environment, collaboration is essential. Slack can replace overflowing email inboxes with customizable “channels” that organize your conversations by project, topic, or team. Slack is protected by the latest security measures and admins can control which channels are shared outside the organization. Channel settings include:

• Public – entire company has access
• Private – for confidential conversations, in which only invitees have access
• Shared – for internal and external staff working together

Everyone on the channel gets a shared view of responsibilities, goals, and progress. Each channel has a searchable archive, so you can quickly find important information. Slack also enables you to designate the conversations you need to address right away versus those that can wait.

Staying on Top of Your To-Dos: Todoist

With Todoist, you get a clear overview of each day’s tasks. You can create recurring due dates and view progress on goals, while also setting notifications so you don’t miss anything important.

Todoist adapts well for project teams with shared task lists, file attachments, and comment discussions. To further refine your planning, you can choose from pre-made templates including marketing and sales, design and product, development, support, and management.

Additionally, Todoist ensures your data is protected with security measures like bank-level encryption, automatic backups, and data synced across your devices.

File Sharing: Google Docs

If you need multiple people in multiple locations working on a single document, you can accomplish it with Google Docs. When anyone makes edits in a shared document, Google automatically saves the changes so everyone can see them. You can communicate with people sharing the file through comments or chat. As the document creator, you control file access, with the ability to give others edit, view, or comment abilities.

You can create your documents within Google Docs, or convert existing documents from a range of file types (such as MS Word), while the original file remains intact. You can store previous versions indefinitely without diminishing storage capacity, and easily track changes and undo any as needed.

Productive Virtual Meetings: Zoom

You no longer need to get everyone in the same room to have a productive meeting. With Zoom, your virtual meetings can include up to 1,000 participants with 49 on-screen at one time. To assist with presentations and training, you can have multiple participants share their computer screens.

Zoom works from your desktop or mobile device and can sync scheduled meetings with calendar apps. You can record a meeting to your computer or the cloud and then share it with team members unable to participate live.

Additional features include:

• HD audio and video
• Team chat with searchable history
• Participant polling and Q&A
• Virtual “hand raising” during meetings
• Participant usage trends tracking
• End-to-end encryption, password protection, and permission settings

 Project Management: Trello 

Trello helps you organize and prioritize a wide range of individual or team projects. You can sync across all your devices, to allow access wherever you are. With Trello, you:

1. Create a “board” and then invite your team to join.
2. Add lists to the board.
3. Make “cards” for tasks and important information.
4. Add details, due dates, checklists, and comments within each card
5. Move cards from “To Do” to “Done” to document progress.

Trello offers tailored project tools in areas like engineering, sales, and support.

 Marketing: Mailchimp

Your company’s success depends on spreading the word through marketing. Mailchimp can help with an all-in-one platform to promote your business across email, social media, landing pages, and websites.

Mailchimp’s pre-built templates, automations, and design tools are perfect for helping you build effective marketing campaigns. You get real-time performance reports, so you can learn what’s working well and who interacted or made purchases. And you can feel confident with Mailchimp’s security tools protecting your account and your customers’ data.

You can build an audience, get feedback from potential customers, and test out product messaging before you launch with a range of landing page templates. Take the next step and promote on social media with Facebook and Instagram ads Mailchimp generates for you. Once you’re ready for a website, you can use the drag-and-drop builder and content design studio.

Scheduling: Calendly

Calendly’s automated scheduling software can help you coordinate company meetings with team members, customers, clients, potential employees, and vendors. It can integrate with a range of calendar apps to check availability before setting meetings.

Special features allow you to:

• Set minimum buffer times between meetings.
• Detect time zone differences.
• Send reminder notifications.
• Cap maximum number of meetings per day.

With Calendly, you can share scheduling links via email or on your website. You can automatically assign requested meetings to whichever team members are available or allow invitees to choose a particular person.

In Summary

The time you spend launching and growing your business is valuable. Make sure you spend it wisely, with help from the latest efficiency tools for communicating, file sharing, virtual meetings, marketing, and more.

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