Why pay rent when you can run an office from your phone?

Convenience is an asset when it comes to making your business stand out in today’s competitive environment. The easier it is for customers to reach you and interact with your products or services, the better you are likely to do.This also works for your team, the core drivers of your business. Last week, we looked at apps that take the pain out of accounting, this week, we discuss apps that leverage on mobile tech to improve the productivity of your team, no matter how mobile or distributed your workforce is.

Slack

Perhaps the most renowned app for workplace collaboration is Slack. At the heart of it, Slack is a messaging and file-sharing app that brings all business communication to one place, while integrating some shared and social platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox and Twitter. The core of Slack’s functionality is channels. This allows teams to create private or public channels for projects, departments, office branches and so on. The app can be used to share files or document links, and allows team members to comment on them, rate them or star them for later reference. Slack even has a notification system that alerts you on conversations in teams you are a part of. In a nutshell, the app enables all office communication to happen either on a single platform open to all members of a given team — including your clients — physical location notwithstanding. It is free to use, unless your business requires special features like unlimited archiving or messaging.

Ryver

Ryver is a communication and collaboration tool similar in functionality to Slack. It offers free use for unlimited users, guests and messages as a way of differentiating its offering from Slack’s. At its core is the concept of compartmentalisation of conversations, giving users the freedom to have both work-related discussions and share lighter communication.

Trello

Trello is a project management and collaboration platform that enables team discussions on given tasks in real time, irrespective of physical location. Trello offers boards, cards and lists. Boards are major assignments to be discussed, while cards are smaller tasks within the major assignments. Cards are aggregated to lists, which then make up boards, to keep track of what needs to be done. Like Slack, Trello has integrated major sharing and social platforms. And aside from being a central place to discuss projects, the app gives you a view of what is going on, who is doing what, and what is pending, all at a glance. This means less emailing for progress reports, less meetings and, hopefully, more productivity. It has three pricing plans available: free for small business teams, Sh1,000 per user per month for medium-sized enterprises, and Sh2,000 per user per month for enterprise-level clients.