7 Business Productivity Tools You Can’t Live Without
Productivity tools are defined as hardware, software, and/or business processes that increase productivity, facilitate collaboration, stimulate creativity, enhance communication, and create data.
In the hustle and bustle of today’s high-energy, ultra-competitive, ever-changing business climate, you can’t afford to waste time. In the spirit of “the right tool for the job”, we present seven productivity tools that are indispensable for your business and making every minute count.
1. Google Calendar Checker. A missed meeting is a lost opportunity, and that could mean losing a sale. Furthermore, there’s the hit that your professional reputation takes if you’re a no-show. These things happen to the best of us, but you can eliminate them from your professional life with the Google Calendar Checker. This extension lets you know how long it is until your next appointment.
2. Full Contact. If you use Gmail, you need this plugin. With everyone conducting their business via email these days, your collection of contacts can get so big and out of control that you lose track of who is who. But with Full Contact in place, you get a sidebar displayed that shows the contact’s photo, data, and social network channels. And speaking of social networks …
3. Google Alerts. Now you can keep track of not only your but your competitors’ web presence thanks to this free service from Google. Use analytics to track search terms employed on Google itself, and see where you pop up on social media pages and blogs, to name a few. It’s a great way to keep an eye on the competition.
4. 1Password. Do you know what the biggest point of vulnerability is for online data? It’s passwords! It’s amazing how something so innocuous can cause so much trouble, and it’s usually because people don’t want to spend time changing and keeping track of complex passwords, so they use simple, easy to figure out words. Fortunately, 1Password is available to help you manage those complicated passwords. That way, you can have strong, secure passwords and have them filled out fast in your logins.
5. Monosnap. Doing a screenshot and annotating it can be a real pain in the butt, and yet sometimes you really need that picture to convey what mere words can’t. As it happens, the free tool Monosnap enables you to take, annotate, and share screen shots without making it complicated.
6. PhraseExpress. If you want to be productive, you need to stop wasting time typing the same long bit of text over and over. With PhraseExpress, a Windows-based tool, you can quickly insert that long-winded tagline or boring chunk of legal boilerplate without having to take the time to type the whole thing out. And we haven’t forgotten you Mac users; you have AText that gives you the same capabilities!
7. OneTab. Busy professionals usually end up having a handful of open tabs at any given time. It can be a challenge to keep track of them all, and since a big reason for having multiple tabs open is to save time, it becomes rather counter-productive. OneTab collapses that big number of tabs into a single saved list of URLs, which in turn will help speed up your computer.
Now that you have all of the tools you need, get out there and be productive! And as if those magnificent seven weren’t enough, you can look here to find even more productivity tools.
