Even the best people fall into the trap of procrastination – whether we like it or not. “Futile hours” is the common enemy and one that must be addressed right away before it becomes a force of habit.
As we transition into remote work, more teams see the value in trying out different productivity tools. But not all productivity tools will render results and apply to your operational nature. Each team is unique, and so are their productivity needs.
To help you navigate through the countless options available to your expense, we’ll identify the different kinds of productivity tools – and even throw in our personal favorites.
1. Team Communication
The most productive teams are those that have a solid communication system. So even when we can’t rely on physical proximity, we can’t forgo our capacities to communicate and collaborate. Team communication tools provide a channel for direct and group messages, document sharing, and task management. Speed is the biggest takeaway from these tools – we all need a system where we can communicate with relative speed and get feedback almost immediately.
Check out: Slack, Zoom, Workplace by Facebook
2. Project Management
Juggling multiple activities can be quite overwhelming – lots of tasks fall through the cracks when we fail to manage the moving parts of a project. With a project management system in place, you can easily mobilize deliverables and delegate tasks to your team members. Essentially, a project management tool is a hub for all the microcosms that make up a project. And when you have everything in one place, you have a bird’s-eye view of everyone’s progress and level of productivity.
Check out: Monday.com, Basecamp, Trello
3. Sales and Lead Management
Keeping tabs on your prospect leads and sales movements is another core function that can benefit from automation. Sales and lead management tools will organize your sales activities and even provide data and insights beyond basics – like conversion rates, close rates, and lead velocity. Taking these activities off of your sales team’s plate allows them to focus on nurturing their pipelines and getting your business more clients.
Check out: Salesforce, Uplead, Zoominfo
4. Marketing Automation
Implementing marketing plans is tedious work and often eats up a huge chunk of your hours. That’s why marketing automation tools are truly heaven sent for marketing teams – not only does it do the legwork, it also monitors your campaigns from the early stages of planning, up to the last leg before the launch date. Spend less time dealing with non-core activities and more time on curating top-notch marketing campaigns.
Check out: Mailchimp, Hubspot, ConvertKit
5. Increased Efficiency
We get it. You’ve got a lot of tasks but with little time on your hands to do it – from organizing your meeting notes down to managing administrative work. Luckily, we now have the technology that provides a helping hand for those who need it the most – think of it as a personal, professional problem solver. These tools will take care of the peripherals so you can focus on big picture goals and more high impact activities.
We often wish a few more hours are added to our day – just so we can attend to all of the tasks on our plate. Thanks to digital innovation, there’s now an influx of productivity tools on the market that can simplify our lives and will allow us to get more things done. With the help of these productivity tools, our teams can spend less time on “how to do this” and focus more on “let’s do this!”
No time to figure these all out? We’ve got you – let’s talk. Send us an email at info@teamspan.com and let’s brainstorm how we can help your team!