SERIES: Remote-First Workforce
In a rapidly evolving business landscape, remote working has transitioned from a mere alternative to a predominant mode of operation. This shift necessitates the adoption of productivity tools to sustain efficiency and facilitate collaboration amongst employees for a remote-first working environment.
In a swiftly changing corporate environment, remote work has transformed from a mere option to a required way of facilitating business. This change necessitates the careful selection of the right productivity tools to maintain effectiveness and encourage teamwork among employees in a remote-first work setting.
The cornerstone of an efficient remote-first environment lies in identifying the best tools for your business.
First up let’s look at what productivity tools are? Productivity tools are software, applications, or devices that help individuals or teams efficiently manage tasks, time, or resources to achieve their goals. These tools often aid in organizing, prioritizing, communicating, and automating various aspects within a business.
They encompass a wide range, including project management, communication, file sharing, and time-tracking software.
To discern the right tools, it’s important to conduct a needs assessment to evaluate the requirements of various business units and teams. Additionally, it is crucial to seek employee feedback to understand their preferences, and consider future scalability and integration capabilities.
Productivity tools come to life when they seamlessly integrate between workflows improving ways of working.
Examples include task managers, calendars, note-taking apps, communication platforms, and spreadsheet software.
How Do You Identify What Tools Suit Your Business Best?
The first step is understanding your business requirements and determining the exact needs. Each business, even businesses within similar industries, will vary based on business models, operating margins and their unique value proposition to clients. Determining the needs of the business is best done when understanding what is available in the market and performing a 360 degree operational review and gap analysis of your business.
Once having identified a broad set of potential solutions, it’s advisable to then benchmark these solutions to your business requirements.
When it comes to reviewing these solutions it’s always a good idea to assess the type of clients these solutions serve and whether your business fits into the same category. One of the key ways innovative tech businesses prioritize product development and innovate with new enhancements is by garnering feedback from existing customers and understanding their pain points. Oftentimes these pain points are common. If you fit into the same grouping of clients, this increases the likelihood that these same pain points you experience, others are trying to resolve and you’ll likely benefit from the same innovation and business improvements. Your business then gets to benefit from the same innovation and product development; big win.
The Best Tools Offer Ease of Integration
It is common for tools to focus their product set on key areas – they seldom provide a complete set of solutions that encompasses your every need. Nor should they. This allows for focused innovation and enhancements to their current product offering. The best tools don’t work in isolation but offer ease of integration with other complimentary productivity tools.