By Alison Stanton
As a small business owner, you are probably interested in finding ways to boost not only your sales, but also your team’s productivity. One of the easiest and most effective ways to do this is to provide your employees with technological tools that can help them work smarter, better and quicker. For example, check out the following tools and how they can enhance the efficiency of your workplace:
Look to the Cloud
If you have a number of employees working on a project together, endless meetings and email trails can be frustrating, tedious and cause the work to slow down. Cloud-based project management software is a great solution. In addition to giving your team one platform in which to work, it will also give them a sense of pride and ownership on the project. A cloud-based project management software system will also give your team access to everything at once; when they login, they can see what has been accomplished and updated, which will put them on the same page quickly and allow each employee to get back to work on the project.
Invest in Energy-Efficient Tools
It will be difficult for your workers to stay on task and be productive when their mobile devices conk out after a couple of hours. To be sure that everyone has the fast internet speeds and long battery life they need to work as efficiently as possible, consider purchasing cellular modems from a reputable company like Qualcomm. For example, the Qualcomm Snapdragon cellular modems offer a number of connectivity benefits to your team and their mobile devices, including faster internet speeds that offer quick download and upload times, which can make it even easier to access files that are stored in the cloud. Calls made through the modem will be extra clear and less likely to drop, which can be embarrassing when your employees are in the middle of an important conference call. The cellular modem can also help to extend the mobile device’s battery life, which will give your team plenty of work and talk time between charges.
Digital Smart Boards Can Make Meetings More Efficient
There will still be times when you need to gather your team together for a good old-fashioned meeting. To help everyone stay focused on what you are saying, consider using digital smart boards that will allow you to share content between a stationary screen like a whiteboard and everyone’s mobile device. Instead of watching your employees scribble notes on what you are saying, they can actively listen to what you are saying and then receive the necessary info at the touch of a button.
Eliminate Passwords
While you want your files and business computers to be safe from hackers, it can be a hassle for your employees to remember numerous passwords to get into corporate systems or their own files. Forgetting a password requires employees to stop what they are doing to sign up for a new one. Eliminate these disruptions to productivity by doing away with passwords through a system like Intel Security True Key. The system relies on innovative technology like facial recognition for your team to access their devices. Once they have entered into the system through True Key, all password-protected systems will be available to them.
In addition to helping your employees to stay on task and get more work done, these technological devices and systems will help to take the burden off of you as a manager to watch over your team. While you can certainly check in on your employees to ensure the projects are being done in a timely manner, providing them with these tools will allow you to focus your energies on the many other aspects of running a business.
Alison Stanton has been a freelance writer for the past 18 years. Based in Phoenix, Arizona, Alison thoroughly enjoys writing about a wide variety of people and topics. When she is not writing, Alison can be found hanging out with her family—which includes three wonderful rescue dogs—and sipping a caffeinated beverage from Starbucks.
