6 Amazing Apps to Increase Business Productivity Forget your notebook and pen to take notes. Get these and enter the digital age.
By Rustam Singh
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The luxury of having your digital life in one easily accessible place with automatic synchronization is now finally extending to businesses as well. Several app developers have tapped to the market of startups looking to streamline their manual record keeping, taking communications and administrative work to the digital sphere.
Here we list a few apps new businesses can choose from to make their life easier. Whether your business is looking to streamline an everyday manual task, or coordinate more efficiently, or accelerate connectivity inside the business, there's an app for that!
CamScanner
The nearly perfect Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology utilized by CamScanner makes the process of turning photographs of texts from books, brochures or handouts into editable digital text a few seconds job. Just ensure the background of the transcript is white and get a sharp photograph, follow instructions and have the content ready to be edited in txt format in a second. Isn't it easy? It also supports cloud sharing, an option of adding a watermark and cross device syncing.
Skype for Business (formerly Lync 2013)
Formerly called Lync 2013, the classic video conferencing app Skype has a business set-up in mind with its crisper new display and easy to use interface. Featuring unlimited free video conferencing, instant messaging, conferencing and audio calling, it runs ad free and without interruptions for a brilliant business interview or discussion.
Slack : Team communications
Although there are several real-time messaging and file-sharing applications out there, Slack wins by its simplicity of design and existing popularity. It has DropBox, Asana, Google+ hangouts, Twitter and Zendesk integrations built right into the app itself. Push notifications and a quick processing algorithm make the platform very responsive, and user-friendly. Every message is archived, so searching is also a breeze.
ScanBizCards Business Card Reader
Save those valuable few seconds to save an associate's details in your phonebook by this app that automatically uses OCR to make printed business cards into readable format texts, which are saved automatically in your phonebook. You can also share your card details via Bluetooth or Whatsapp in a Vcard format. Not only would the OCR by ScanBizCards look super cool during a business meet, you'd be saving valuable time during interactions to automatically include a contact in your phone.
Evernote
Evernote is fine tuned version of taking notes than your usual stock app. It has inbuilt checklists, a wide workplace to sketch, draw, attach images, doodle, add attachments for docs & PDF's and share your notes via email within the app. It also scans receipts, and turns business cards into contacts. While it's a little bloated with some junk features at 90 MB, it makes the process of business meetings and brainstorming for ideas even digitally more fun.
Expensify
After absorbing the luxuries of a business trip, the hardest part is gathering crumbling receipts and making a large excel file stating your summaries for reimbursement. Expensify aims to change that by automatically reading the printed paper receipts and adding them to pre-designed templates for a smooth transition into electronic records. Other features include reimbursement calculation on the basis of miles travelled, hourly wage, worldwide currency support and synchronizing directly with your bank account – most of it supported offline. This makes business travel easier on you as well as your accountant.
