These applications can help your business run more smoothly and encourage greater productivity.

Starting and subsequently running a business is no easy feat. You must design a business plan and model, take the seemingly hundreds of steps necessary to implement them, and then find qualified employees to help make your business a reality. Because it’s such a complicated process, staying organized is essential to finding success. Luckily, there’s an app for that. To help your business to run more efficiently, check out the numerous organizational tools you can utilize throughout the process.

Boomerang

It’s easy to get distracted by a constant influx of emails throughout the day or to spend too much time stressing over an email before hitting send. Applications like Boomerang can help eliminate some of this distraction and worry. Boomerang is an organizational tool that works within your Gmail or Outlook to help you take control of your inbox throughout the day. Among its many functions is the ability to pause your inbox for a specific period of time, allowing you to better focus on your other important tasks distraction-free. While your inbox is paused, you can even opt to have Boomerang send an automated response notifying the sender that you’ll get back to them shortly.

Boomerang also includes an AI assistant to help you compose more effective emails to ensure you’re getting the responses that you need. As a bonus, Boomerang will show when someone has read your email and remind you to send a follow-up email if you have yet to hear back from them. To help reduce a lot of back-and-forth, you can also easily schedule meetings within your email through Boomerang’s patented Magic Live Calendar, which is always updated according to your current availability.

Evernote

Note-taking is an important part of both professional and personal organization. Since running a business requires both, you might consider trying an application like Evernote to keep all your ideas and logs in one place. Within the application, you can create different notebooks for various purposes, allowing you to organize your business plans, to-do lists, meeting notes, and more all in one place. You can also scan documents and clip web pages that you can then easily share with others in your organization. And since the application connects to Google Calendar, you can attach your to-do lists or notes to any scheduled meetings or calls for easy access in the future.

MindMeister

Mind mapping, a visual method for organizing thoughts, is a great way to generate new ideas and flush out concepts. MindMeister is a digital mind-mapping tool that expands on this technique by allowing you to collaborate with others through virtual mind maps. There are numerous ways to utilize the platform, including brainstorming, project management and planning, and meeting organization. It can help you and anyone you’re working with better organize any ideas for future projects, your client data, timelines for various tasks, and anything else related to your business. You can work directly within the MindMeister app, or you can opt to integrate it with your Google Drive or Microsoft Teams to keep all your ideas in one place. Think of it like a digital whiteboard that you can easily adjust and add to as you have new ideas for your business.

Momentum

Momentum is a browser extension that supports better focus and productivity. With this tool, you can create a customized dashboard on your New Tab page—be it Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge—that welcomes you with an inspiring photo or quote to get your day started on the right foot. You can also opt to include a daily to-do list, weather updates, and a notes section where you can jot down ideas as they come to you throughout the day. Anything that helps you  stay focused can in turn support more organized and productive days.

Nimble

Geared more toward salespeople, Nimble organizes your client data and sales process in one place by bringing together information regarding client follow-ups, client history, and your team’s progress throughout the sales process. The platform syncs data and contact information from across more than 160 applications, including Outlook, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, MailChimp, and QuickBooks. With this user-friendly CRM, you have the option to work within the mobile application or to add it to your Google Suite or Office 365 account. These different choices allow you to create a personalized work experience that can encourage each member of your team to stay on top of the sales workflow and generally make more sales.

Wrike

To help you and your team manage your to-do lists, consider using a task-management system like Wrike. This program allows different users to collaborate on tasks all in one space and creates a streamlined process that eliminates the need for communicating across multiple platforms. Projects are divided into individual tasks that you can then delegate to your team and automatically schedule into the future. There’s also the option to track time for each user and task, which can lead to a more accurate understanding of how long it takes for a project to be completed. This tracking subsequently holds your team accountable since you can see how much time every person puts into each step of the project. With a mobile and desktop application, users have the flexibility to design a customizable experience to better support individual productivity.

TAKE ACTION:
Examine your current business workflow, and consider how implementing one or more of these organizational tools can help create a more productive process.