Productivity for startups – the tech connection

by Startacus Admin

As a fledgling business, you’ve got plenty to compete with, from your business rivals and reluctant bank managers, to red tape and skills/ money/ resource shortages. But no matter what your current situation or circumstances, you can always tweak your productivity to increase your output and speed-up the pace and progress of all those other things.

In this article we’re going to take a look at some of the simple but powerful ways that you can use digital technology to turbo-charge your productivity without spending a fortune.

Get organised with apps

Today there are literally thousands of apps that will help you to organise your business, both on your desktop computer and on your phone. Getting organised will mean that less time is wasted on trying to retrieve information or on unnecessary distractions. ‘Getting organised’ will naturally vary from business to business, but there are a few apps that can help most businesses to structure their information and processes.

Trello is a fantastic organisational tool for teams, and is highly task-focused. It is essentially a series of customisable digital boards which you can add tasks and projects to, in the form of ‘cards’. Each card can be assigned to specific people, and team members can comment on the card and add information as necessary. With Trello you can coordinate and collaborate on the workflow for multiple teams, and team members can access the boards remotely and instantly via a phone app or web browser.

If you’ve got lots of information that you need to organise, for example product specs or research notes, Microsoft OneNote may be the solution that you need to banish those multiple scattered computer folders or bits of paper for good. With it you can create multiple digital ‘notebooks’, where you can store and organise text, images, screen/web clippings and more, in a series of tabbed sections and sub-pages. 

Utilise the cloud

You’re probably well aware by now that your employees or colleagues don‘t all need to be in the same room to work together on projects. By utilising cloud storage solutions like Google Drive or Microsoft’s Onedrive, you can give them the power to access and collaborate on all the same documents and other files that they would if they were sitting together in the same building on the same network. What’s more, because everything’s stored on the cloud, your data is securely backed up, preventing any productivity roll-backs caused by lost data.

If you have lots of documents and information to share on a regular basis, you may also want to consider a versatile cloud-based digital document solution such as Power PDF. With Power PDF you can store and share all of your documents together in a single format, and easily set access rights so that you can control who can view, edit or print specific documents.

Strengthen and streamline your communications

Finally, communication within an organisation is the key to productivity, so it’s a good idea to use digital tools to help you communicate more effectively. Using a tool like Slack makes it possible for you to correspond digitally within customisable channels, so that you can keep track of who said what, search previous conversations, and ensure that the right people are talking. Under or over-communicating can be significant productivity drains for any business, and Slack makes it possible to streamline and specifically target your conversations.

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Published on: 10th March 2016