Hidden Values Of Team Productivity Tools
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer, American motivational speaker
How long does a typical work day last? On average, from 7 to 8 hours. However, the truth is that we actually work less.
The 2014 Wasting Time at Work Survey showed that 69% of employees lost at least some time at work on a daily basis. Moreover, this number continues to increase from year to year.
Why does it happen? There are a lot of different reasons, but internet remains one of the biggest time eaters. It’s hard to imagine a day without answering messages in social networks, checking Twitter news feed or reading emails, right?
How do you make your teams more productive? Workplace productivity is a little like breathing. Whether you’re managing a big company or a part of large organization, there are certain team productivity tools that will make you more productive than others. As teamwork collaboration is on the rise, technology offers plenty of options. It’s just about making the right choice for more productivity.
List of Best Team Productivity Tools
- ProofHub
ProofHub is a team management software that offers a comprehensive suite of collaboration and project management functions. This is a cloud-based system to organize files, monitor projects, review and approve files through an online proofing tool, discuss ideas, deliver projects and get more done faster. All under one roof, stay in the loop with your clients.
The tool is loved by more than 85,000 teams and businesses worldwide. ProofHub has integration with many third party apps like Freshbooks, Google calendar and iCal, Box, Dropbox, Google drive, Onedrive and Outlook. Its notable clients include Netflix, Google, Walt Disney, NASA, Pinterest, Bosch, and many more.
2. Microsoft Dynamics 365
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is cloud-based business management software solution. It can be configured as either a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and help boost sales and marketing results. Alternatively, Dynamics 365 can be used as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, helping businesses manage all aspects of sales, finance and production. Automating work flows and improving the conversions of leads makes Dynamics 365 a business-wide productivity tool that can get all areas of a business working closer together.
3. Airtable
Airtable has a spreadsheet-like interface, that is very flexible and has a mobile friendly database management solution. It offers real-time collaboration. Airtable is compatible with multiple devices, integrates with all essential apps, like Asana, Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, and more. You can filter and display information in spreadsheet, timeline, gallery, kanban, or calendar view.
Airtable lets users to organize all content easily. This software is priced on a per user per month basis. A mobile app is available for iOS.
4. Asana
Asana is a project management solution that facilitates team collaboration and communication. You can organise all your projects in a list or board form, so it’s the only tool you need to coordinate tasks. Using lists, boards, calendars, and timelines, teams can easily delegate tasks and accomplish great things on time. Integrates with all your essential apps, like Salesforce, Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack, and more.
Capture tasks, to-dos, reminders, and ideas using Asana. It can also be accessed on both Android and iOS smartphones.
You can start help your team get more done in less time. Try ProofHub free. Sign up now.
5. Trello
Trello is a team management software and planning platform that allows you to work with boards or lists. It helps teams organize their projects on a virtual bulletin board with cards and lists. Trello is available for a number of integrations with apps such as Evernote, GitHub, JIRA, Google Drive and Slack. On Trello board, users can view, edit, and track projects from beginning to end. You can also create public views to gather feedback.
Trello brings joy to team productivity. You can have a shared perspective for your team on any project in a rewarding way. Trello’s core features are free but there are premium options available which give access to more features.
6. Zapier
Zapier is an online tool built specifically to help non-technical people create interlinked functions across these services. Zapier automates whatever tasks users do with their web applications through building of Zaps. It moves information between user web apps automatically, so you can focus on getting work done.
Connects more than 1,000 web apps and tools. Moreover, there are various pre-made and seamless integrations to help you start using Zapier.
7. Flowdock
Flowdock is a group and private chat platform. It is a useful tool for social team collaboration to keep up speed with people within your team. You can centralize your company’s information, conversation, aggregate notification from other channels to team inbox, talk to your team members in real-time or in group. Get your teammates connected through remote chat according to topics and timezones.
8. HipChat
HipChat is a cloud-based instant messaging app built for businesses to collaborate with your team via live stream. It works well for both internal and external business communication, keeping communications secure. This app supports HD video conferencing and screen sharing capabilities, and share files upon a private network.
HipChat comes with numerous integrations with JIRA, Bitbucket, GitHub, Heroku, Zendesk, Mailchimp, and more. Moreover, it supports custom emoticons and bots, GIFs, Instagram feeds, social media notifications, etc. It includes Linux support, along with its standard iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows apps.
9. Dropbox
Dropbox is a cloud storage and file-syncing platform to give you access to your files from nearly anywhere. It’s good for individuals as well as teams. Files sync across connected devices seamlessly. You can store virtually any type of file including word documents, photos and videos.
Dropbox provides access to your most important files from anywhere, anytime. The users have the flexibility to view, edit and share content from any computer or device. It offers seamless ease of use and countless integrations with other services and apps including Microsoft Office 365, Slack, Adobe Acrobat Document Cloud and hundreds more.
Also Read: 17 Best Alternatives To Dropbox You Need To About In 2022!
10. Workfront
Workfront is a cloud-based project management solution that helps teams to prioritize, manage and report on their work. It is suitable for businesses of any size. The managers can easily prioritize incoming projects, get real time updates on progress, collaborate, assign work, track deadlines, deliver work and manage reviews and approvals. Workfront includes social media-style tools for transparent, project-focused communications. You can plan project tasks, resource allocation and milestones right from the Gantt view.
This project management software is cross-platform compatible giving you way out to manage work using an iOS or Android tablet or phone.
11. Scoro
Scoro is an end-to-end project management tool for users to create project budgets, manage meetings, tasks, invoices, expenses, files, allocate non-billable and billable work, and more. With Scoro, users don’t have to shuffle between different applications and email clients. They can manage all information in a single page. Scoro can be customized to fit the required workflow. It lets its users stay up to date and see task changes in real time.
Scoro seamlessly integrates with many systems, including iCal, Outlook Google and other calendar apps. You can use your Dropbox account to access files, connect with Mailchimp to synchronize mailing lists and XERO for financial data.
12. Producteev
Producteev is an online task management tools for tasks, projects, and those collaborating on them. The interface includes privacy management, categorization, and prioritization. Producteev can connect members working on different operating systems and devices. Tasks are created as to-do items within projects.
Planning and delegating tasks is also a breeze with Producteev. It can connect members even when they are on different operating systems and devices with total and seamless collaboration and communication.
13. Mavenlink
Mavenlink is suitable for professional service businesses, offers solutions for project management, resource planning, and collaboration. This app helps employees be productive. You can have an insight your team needs to deliver projects. Mavenlink transforms your business as it offers collaboration, time tracking, resource management, and project financials all in one place.
Mavenlink’s emphasis is on team collaboration and task management. It integrates with many third-party applications, including Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, JIRA and Zendesk.
Modern web-based tools and technology change the way people communicate and collaborate. Fortunately, they can be not only an enemy for our team productivity, but also a friend. With this list of collaboration tools available today, teams have the opportunity to get work done with minimum time, effort and money loss.
“Do you want to make 2019 the most productive year and manage work effortlessly? Switch to ProofHub.”
Do team productivity tools really make a teamwork more effective or it’s just a marketing buzz? Are there some benefits you don’t know yet? Let’s dive under the hood and find out.
How to Increase Productivity of Team Members?
Constant collaboration and communication are two pillars of teamwork. With that in mind, team productivity without balanced roles and clear objectives can have the opposite effect. It doesn’t matter how well your team climbs Mount Everest if you were going to climb Mont Blanc. I mean, team members can do their best to get the job done, but if there is a lack of understanding of their common task, the results will be disappointing.
Effective teamwork should be up, down and across the organization. Employees need to have an opportunity to instantly connect with each other. This task becomes even more challenging when your team includes remote employees. The solution is simple — start using team collaboration tools. According to McKinsey, they improve communication and collaboration among team members and therefore raise the productivity of employees by up to 25 percent. That is why online software is an essential element of every productive team.
Now that you know the key components of team productivity, it’s time to talk about problems that can stand in the way of building a productive team.
Challenges in Team Productivity
Chances are, team members know the answer to this question. In-office and remote employees are surrounded by different time wasters which affect the result of their work. Tones of emails, futile conversations, non-work-related internet browsing… And the list goes on.
Mistakes in task management, as well as insufficient team communication, kill productivity more than anything else. What about statistics? 40% of employees spend one quarter of their week completing routine tasks. This wouldn’t happen if they used the right task management software. Besides, a team of 100 people spends about 7 hours a week to overcome problems caused by misunderstandings between employees. As a result, about $37 billion go to dealing with communication issues every year.
If you are afraid that something threatens your team productivity or, what is worse, completely confident in that, take a closer look at online tools your co-workers are using now.
Why Use Team Productivity Tools?
The work-related communication may never end: when you work in a team, you probably stay in touch 24/7. In such a rhythm it’s highly recommended to optimize the schedule and make the workflow as streamlined as possible. Good news is that we live in the 21st century (hurray!) and there are a plenty of tools for planning, controlling team tasks progress, sorting emails. Applications can be found for every need of super-busy team members.
When people say ‘team productivity tools’, they actually mean every online software which can boost team performance. Team chat and video conferencing apps, time tracking and project management tools — all this software improves and fosters the way people collaborate. Thus, tasks are performed more quickly and team productivity grows.
It goes without saying that employees use video conferencing tools for video calls and task manager for tasks. Nevertheless, I would like to draw your attention to values of team productivity tools which can be not quite so obvious to their users.
Transforming collaboration with Artificial Intelligence
Nowadays everybody talks about the Artificial Intelligence (AI), but it’s very hard to predict the consequences of its development. Sure, we are far away from the imitation of human intelligence. At the same time, AI products like chatbots or intelligent voice assistants are already available. As the main task of AI is not to overrun the Earth, but enhance employees’ productivity, 39% of companies started using some aspect of AI at work.
Startups already play with AI to find new ways for people to collaborate. Artificial Intelligence will take over boring daily tasks so that people spend their day more productive. For example, Chanty AI-powered team chat learns to bring key takeaways from discussions you’ve missed while the Clara system offers an intelligent, 24/7 available assistant for all daily routine like sending emails or scheduling events.
Getting rid of huge heaps of emails with organized communication
A lot of people are addicted to email as a form of daily communication with colleagues. Luckily, there are more reliable ideas to improve team productivity by exchanging information and documents.
MailTime.com new survey of 1,500 people proved that the majority of employees (52%) who send a work-related email expect a reply within 12 and 24 hours. Let’s assume that it’s too long to wait. Even if you don’t need an urgent reply, email evidently fails as a tool for effective conversations. By the way, it’s not the only reason why you should think over another way of communication with team members.
Emails slow employees down causing an overload of business and personal information. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they are important or not. That is why people waste time reading emails to make sure they don’t miss anything. Moreover, it’s easy to lose an important email or find it in spam. Apart from that, you can get a message and just forget about it after receiving hundreds of emails a day.
The other problem is that email threads are very hard to manage and keep all information under control. So, it’s time to move work-related conversations to team chat apps designed for improving teams’ productivity and communication. Real-time notifications report on new messages so that team members always stay informed. Moreover, searchable message history makes finding necessary documents extremely easy.
Anyway, if you can’t avoid looking through emails, become an inbox ninja. Integrate your inbox with the team chat tool and live in peace.
Single notification center
It’s no secret that technology made our life much easier. Applications let users track almost any information they are interested in. On the other hand, if there are too many tools, it’s easy to get distracted and confused.
The key to working more effectively is to get your productivity tools working in tandem, but not taking your time. However, the more tools you use, the more time you spend switching between apps in fear to miss something. So, you need a tracker for all your tools — a single center for all incoming notifications.
Tools like Zapier or PieSync let you connect apps you use and all alerts come into one place you choose. Moreover, you can find a team messenger or all-in-one project management tool which integrates with other apps you need.
Greater flexibility
Team productivity tools let people stay connected from both their laptop and mobile phone. In the office or on the go, they will always get the latest information and be able to communicate, assign tasks, share ideas, thoughts, and files.
Moreover, people can not only collaborate across the globe but respect each team member’s time zone. There are a lot of time zone converters and chatbots which help to better understand coworkers and be available when needed. It’s especially important when it comes to setting deadlines and scheduling video meetings.
Final thoughts
Team productivity faces a lot of obstacles during the work day. Thankfully, today there’s an ocean of different team productivity tips and tools out there. They not only perform their core functions like instant text messaging or tracking the time spent on tasks, they change the way people collaborate.
Productivity tools keep employees informed, bringing all the work of entire team under one roof. This software is especially important if team members are located in different offices or work remotely. Today, employees from Argentina can be easily hired in Indonesia, as geographical limits are disappearing thanks to different team productivity apps.
Want to use your time efficiently? Looking forward to how to increase team’s efficiency? Choose productivity tools that will work best for your team, considering all their values. If you find the software that will satisfy team members’ needs in collaboration and communication, productivity will become the best friend of your team forever.
“Don’t let poor project management become a barrier in your success. Start using ProofHub.’’
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