Technology plays a very important role in the day-to-day work of entrepreneurs and small businesses. Mobile devices are especially important, as they allow us to be on top of our business at all times. That’s the reason why a large ecosystem of applications is emerging. As we know it is difficult to choose among them, to make your life easier we have selected five apps that will help you improve your productivity and keep your business under control.
IFTTT
IFTTT is the acronym of “if this then that”, and behind it there is a service that lets you create automatic connections between your apps. Although it sounds somewhat complex, this is an app that once you download it you will not stop using it.
Powered by the call to action generated by the phrase “if this then that”, it allows to create an automatic communication between different applications such as Facebook, Gmail and Twitter.
For example, if every time you are tagged on Facebook and you want to receive an e-mail through Gmail, you can get it creating the rule “If I have been tagged in a photo on Facebook, send me an e-mail”. Another example might be “When I get to the office, change the status of my phone to vibrate mode”, thanks to the communication channel IFTTT establishes between the Maps application and the state of your smartphone.
IFTTT lets you create a wide range of rules or combinations (which they call Recipes) among more than 100 applications, and it is available for iOS and Android.
Camcard
This is a professional business cards reader, very useful, especially when you have a meeting. Through the camera of your mobile device, this app is capable of capturing images of a business card, recognize its content and save it automatically, as if it were a contact. Also, from your Android, iOS, Windows Phone or Blackberry phone you can search, sort and group the business cards you've captured, and set a password to protect your "digital business card holder."
In addition, CamCard contains many other features that will be useful for you, such as the recognition of an e-mail signature, the generation and recognition of QR codes and the export of Excel files, among others.
CamCard Lit allows the user to save 10 cards in the first week and then two cards per week. Although this application is available only in English, you'll probably find it quite helpful.
SignEasy
This is an application whose goal is to eliminate that valuable time we tend to waste searching for a printer or a fax machine to send documents that require to be signed. SignEasy is a simple and useful service that allows you to sign and send documents securely using BlackBerry, iOS and Android devices. Furthermore, it offers users the ability to store documents in the cloud using Dropbox.
It’s so simple that there are only three steps required to use this app:
– Import a document from your e-mail, a website or Dropbox.
– Sign the document with a digital pen or even a finger, and fill in your name, date, etc.
– Finally, just send the document completed by e-mail and, if necessary, save it in Dropbox.
Evernote
You’ve probably heard about this application, and you may not find it as innovative as the previous ones, but besides allowing you to collect and organize your notes, did you know that with the Business Evernote edition it is also possible to organize and track the costs of your business?
The next time you have a receipt for a business lunch or an invoice that you need to send to the accounting department, take a picture of it using the Document Camera of Evernote on your mobile device. You can gather all your expenses in a notebook from Evernote Business, sort them by year and organize them adding tags according to the type of expenditure, customer or travel. This way, you can easily find them when you need to refer to the costs of a particular period of time.
You can submit all your receipts and other expenses to the accounting department sharing your notebook or just sending a note via e-mail with a single expense. With the Expensify tool you can even generate expense reports based on the receipts captured with the app, which simplifies even more the process of getting a refund.
Google Analytics
This popular service has long had a version for mobile devices; however, being such a useful and productive application, it was essential to include it in this list. Google has optimized the design of Analytics so that you can easily access the data and reports of this application anytime, anywhere, using your smartphone or tablet.
The mobile version brings you features such as reports in real-time and new visualizations that change dynamically, adjusting to the size and orientation of the device’s screen. This way you have several ways to view specific reports from a domain, with information about how visitors use your website. Besides, if you link Google Analytics to your AdWords account, the first one automatically tracks the behavior of the visitors coming from your ads.