Today, more and more SMEs are struggling to improve employee productivity. Keeping employees engaged and focused is not an easy thing. Studies consistently show that a disturbingly high number of employees are disengaged, not working at full productive capacity. For SMEs (Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises) with multiple employees it’s critical to use every available tool and resource to maximize employee productivity and gain a competitive edge. SMEs need to be challenging the ‘status quo’ and constantly improving the rate of production.
Here’s a look at five effective employee productivity tools for SMEs:
Trello
Better collaboration means better employee productivity. Trello is a free and highly visual online collaboration tool that organizes projects into “lists of lists” with cards on a virtual board. The cards may be dragged and dropped between lists to show how a project is progressing. You may add as many people as you need, drag them to cards, add and reorder lists as you need.
Trello adapts to your project, team, and workflow. Being a visual tool, Trello provides SMEs a view of what’s being worked on, which employees are working on what, and what progress has been made, all at a glance.
Slack
At its core, Slack is a cloud-based instant messaging and team collaboration tool. It’s integration with numerous popular apps makes it even more interesting for small and mid-sized businesses. Using this app you may organize your team conversations in open channels, or use private channels for more sensitive information. To reach a colleague directly, you may send them a Direct Message.
Furthermore, all your files can be dragged and dropped right into Slack and shared with anyone you want. You can even add comments, star for later reference, and it’s all completely searchable. Everything in Slack – messages, notifications, files, and all – is automatically indexed and archived so that you can have it at your fingertips whenever you want. If you use any services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box, just paste the link and that document is immediately in sync and searchable too.
Connect all the tools you use to Slack and avoid all that constant switching between apps. Set up your integration so that you get all your notifications directly within Slack—from support requests, code check-ins, and error logs to sales leads—all of them searchable in one central archive.
The free version includes: searchable message archives, up to 10k of your team’s most recent messages, 10 apps or service integrations, native apps for iOS, Android, Mac & Windows Desktop, two-person calls and 5GB total file storage for the team.
VIENNA Advantage Cloud ERP & CRM
VIENNA Advantage is a complete product invention covering all functional obligations of a modern enterprise. Using this web and cloud based ERP & CRM solution you will realize strategic goals with one application across the company; hundreds of features within the tightly integrated ERP and CRM system. It is the first ever cloud ERP and CRM solution that has an inbuilt and secure Document Management System (DMS).
VIENNA Advantage increases your employees’ productivity and efficiency by supporting them with the right tools. Plan and optimize all areas of your business, automate sales from lead generation to invoicing, manage marketing, emails, customer support, projects, inventory, accounting and much more. The Free Cloud ERP trial comes with 30 days unlimited premium support.
Rescue Time
Time waste is employees’ biggest enemy. This is especially true for small and mid-sized businesses who need to make every moment at work count. Rescue Time, a free software program installed on a computer, helps companies increase employee productivity by tracking productive time. Some of the key features that this app provides are: monitoring activities throughout the day, set goals and track progress, track time spent both on and offline, block access to ‘time-wasting websites’, and see what apps and websites were used during the day.
Rescue Time measures daily time productivity on a scale of very distracting, to very productive, and produce an overall score that indicates just how productive the user’s day actually was. Based on those scores, workers can make adjustments to improve the productivity of their time.
Dropbox for Business
With work these days occurring on multiple devices, the Dropbox app makes it easy and convenient for workers to sync important work documents across all platforms for easy retrieval on the device of their choice, whenever and wherever they may be. With more than 50% of IT business professional disclosing that they will be deploying a personal cloud for workplace purposes, it’s clear that options like Dropbox are needed for everyday business. And the ability to create shared folders, and choose which team members may access those folders to work on documents, makes Dropbox for Business a great collaboration tool.
