Keeping business organized and focused: There's an app for that

By Contributing Writer

May 19, 2020

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Surely, the goal of every executive is to stay organized and focused; to be able to move projects forward efficiently and respond quickly to rapidly and constantly evolving business situations. If you’re struggling with too much information, too many to-dos, too many contacts or too many too-manys, there’s probably an app to help you gain control.

With over one million apps available in the AppStore and another million in Android’s Google Play store, the first task is to separate time-wasters from those that actually help you to improve productivity, connectivity or simply make life easier. Here are just a few new apps that seem worthy of the C-Suite.

Businessfriend

Businessfriend allows you to create a professional social network, the way you want it. There are several components including a social media feed which aggregates the content of your choice, a built-in instant messenger, a voice and video calling feature, a digital rolodex-type feature and a cloud-based digital workspace for storage of documents, pictures and other content. The four components are intuitive, cleanly designed, and easy to use. With businessfriend, executives can now stay organized and up-to-date with one app, on any device, whether at home or on the road.

Confide

This app has received lots of buzz since the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 2015. Confide markets itself as Snapchat for business. There is a global need for ephemeral communication in many businesses. Sensitive deal making data, private issues, or confidential data can be securely exchanged with Confide. Both parties can feel more secure than ever that the information exchanged is not trackable, not viewable by anyone other than the recipient and is not retained. Messages are encrypted and are automatically deleted once they are viewed. The app even prevents recipients from taking screenshots of messages. Confide is integrated with Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive cloud storage and supports most of the top file formats.

Evernote

The popular organizer, Evernote, now supports scanning of documents. Handy on business trips, Evernote Scannable will digitize receipts to easily attach to expense reports. It can scan contracts and other documents for uploading to the home office immediately or scan business cards at conferences to create rich and valuable contact lists. The app will ensure the scan is cropped and rotated correctly and the resulting images are enhanced and clear. Evernote allows for easy categorizing and search and retrieval of saved data.

HipChat

Some executives avoid having chat accounts on the common services, or create pseudonyms, because of the lack of privacy. No one wants to be interrupted during their workday by former colleagues who see you are online or by personal contacts. HipChat allows companies to create a private team chat network. Whether users are virtual or in the office, everyone can keep in touch and answer questions easily and quickly. There is a also status feature to show away time and file sharing tools.

Passpack

One of the most frustrating issues, especially at work, is trying to remember all the passwords for various systems and programs. The Passpack password manager lets you tag and sort all of your credentials for easy searching. Passpack is well aware of security issues and their methods and infrastructure are highly fault-tolerant and secure. Data can be accessed from anywhere, making it easy to look up a username and password no matter where you are. Passpack also provides a browser button that can be installed on your favorite browser for easy one-click login to websites of your choosing.

PocketCloud Remote Desktop Pro

PocketCloud allows you to take your desktop with you anywhere. This app connects at high resolution to your PC or Mac computer so you can access your files and run programs and videos. The app is simple to install and use and takes advantage of enterprise-level security. Lots of tech features including multitasking, keyboard auto-activation, an intuitive user interface, VNC(Virtual Network Computing), RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol), VMWare View support, and Secure Tunneling for VNC Auto Discovery make this product a solid and secure option for remote access.

Amazon’s Kindle App

Travel with one less device by using the Kindle app on your phone or tablet. Catching up on reading is more convenient than ever since your phone is always with you. There are over 900,000 books available in the Kindle format and countless articles and white papers on the web that can be added to the app as well as library eBooks. The app will sync across devices so you won’t lose your place and supports bookmarks, highlighting and notes across devices as well. If you buy a book on one device, it is then available on all devices.

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Documents To Go

View and create documents using Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint anytime, anywhere using this powerful app. The app also supports Adobe PDF viewing and is fully integrated with Google Docs. In addition, Documents To Go can sync files to your desktop, to cloud storage accounts, and allows for viewing of password protected files. Documents To Go un-tethers busy executives from their desktops.

Apps are taking over as the heartbeat of fast-moving organizations. Corporations are using apps to find and win new business, streamline and organize communications and processes, and to keep customer satisfaction high. Whatever need you may have as an executive—be it a way to access important information quickly while on the road or a method for organizing your reading list to keep up with the latest trends—you can be sure there’s probably an app for that.

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