Office productivity is a huge market, with a lot of different products and services out there that can help with the challenge. Every business will share the experience of trying to optimise their workforce’s productivity – and the solution is increasingly being found through technology.
We spoke to TechQuarters, who provide managed IT services London businesses have been using for over a decade. As a managed services provider, TechQuarters often recommend technologies to their clients which they feel will improve their operational efficiency in some way – we asked them to recommend the best solutions for office productivity that are available.
Productivity Apps & Services
We spoke with TechQuarters about what they define as a productivity app or services, and they stated that it can be any type of software which supports a work-related activity to make it quicker or easier to accomplish. They told us that, as an IT support company London companies have been turning to for years, they know what types of issues organisations frequently run into when it comes to daily workflows – and according to them, these are the types of apps that businesses should be looking at adopting:
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Asana
This feature-rich collaboration app has been helping businesses facilitate work for over a decade. It is used by many well-known companies. It’s core purpose is to track the work of staff so that the best possible results can be achieved. It features to-do lists, deadline reminders, and the ability to send requests to colleagues. There is a feed where users can post information, and their colleagues can leave comments on these posts. Projects can be arranged in either a board format, or a list format.
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Trello
Another very well known project management solution, Trello has an extensive set of features, is very easy to use, and features lots of powerful add-ons to enhance the services functionality. The interface of Trello is very simple, but can go very deep – meaning it is just as suitable for managing long-term projects as it is for managing basic to-do lists. In Trello, you create boards, onto which you add cards. A card could be a single task, or it could be a complex checklist of items. Cards can have all kinds of information added to them to ensure that you have all the data you need to complete the work. Trello integrates with services like Evernote, GitHub, and Salesforce.
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RescueTime
This app is perfect for staff that struggle with time management. It is an services designed to track your digital activity in the background – as a software, it is very inconspicuous; so you can have it running all day, gathering data and it won’t be a distraction. RescueTime tracks how much time you spend it each website or application that you visit throughout the day, and compiles a report on all the time spent per day. This type of reporting can help users see where their time is being sucked up. RescueTime also lets users set targets and alerts to help one stay focuses on their goals. The app is supported on both mobile and desktop.
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Office 365
Widely considered to be the most comprehensive and effective office productivity suite on the market, this is the productivity solution that TechQuarters recommends the most – as a company with years of Office 365 consulting experience, they have extensive knowledge on its capabilities. The suite features the classics, such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel; and it also includes OneNote, OneDrive, SharePoint, Outlook, and Teams. These tools together provide staff with just about all the functionality they need to execute their daily workflows and complete tasks efficiently. All of the Office 365 apps are integrated into the Microsoft Cloud, meaning that the flow of information between these apps is highly flexible, and communicate and collaboration is very intuitive.
