Our Top 5 Favorite Apps for Businesses
There are over one million apps in the App Store alone. Games, calendars, smart alarm clocks, social media—anything you can imagine. There are also an impressive amount of applications for businesses to help organize data, stay connected, and increase productivity. We’ve sifted through the top apps for businesses and curated our five favorites.
Evernote
Evernote had humble begins in 2008 as a basic note taking app, but has since exploded into a suite of products catered to everyone from designers to business owners. The “notes” you save can be anything from a voice memo to a picture of a Post-It, and they can be organized into notebooks, tagged, and annotated.
Handwritten notes can also be added by simply snapping a photo with your smart phone, and the smart search function allows you to find keywords in both text and images. That means your handwritten notes are searchable—an incredibly valuable feature. Additionally, everything lives in the cloud so you can access it from anywhere and share it easily within Evernote, or simply export and email your documents.
Evernote is free, but they’ve recently launched Evernote Business at $10/user/month. It allows your entire team to centralize all of your knowledge and ideas, and automatically matches up notes that are related to each other. It also offers useful features like Presentation Mode, enhanced business level support, and a really snazzy Salesforce integration.
LastPass
You know you’re supposed to have a different password for every single account, but chances are you don’t—because it’s a pain. It’s not feasible to remember 40 different passwords, and writing them down isn’t secure or convenient.
LastPass solves the problem of password security by encrypting all of your passwords and storing them for you so you never have to think about it again. Local decryption means your passwords never leave your device, and LastPass automatically plugs your passwords in for you—and that’s just the free version.
Upgrade to premium and you’ll get LastPass for all of your mobile devices. Or get your whole team set up with their enterprise option that allows you to control user access, customize security, and track system activity. LastPass also has several options to heighten security so you can protect your passwords with layers of protection.
Roambi
This beautifully designed app reimagines data visualization and puts it all at your fingertips in real time. Roambi Analytics™ pulls data from SAP, Oracle, Salesforce—anywhere you can imagine—and creates 10 different interactive views for you to peruse.
You can view layered sales sheets, dynamic marketing metrics, and customer relationship management data all in one place. Plus, all your data is stored locally so you can access it without an internet connection.
After compiling all of your data into pretty visualizations, use Roambi Flow™ to create interactive publications that will blow your old PDFs out of the water. Make beautiful cases studies with their simple drag-and-drop interface that allows you to combine your data with videos, images, and text.
Box
Box allows you to replace the need for an FTP with centralized cloud storage and sharing for your whole company. You can transfer files securely from all of your devices, and they offer branding options for when you are interacting with customers. It’s basically DropBox but with a ton of added features and robust security.
Their basic version is free for up to 10 GB, but their Business and Enterprise options offer solutions like the Sales Portal to keep up-to-date marketing materials on hand. Additionally you can integrate Box with other business applications and customize the platform with 120+ Box Apps.
Tempo
Tempo’s smart calendar turns your mobile device into an organization machine. Contacts automatically update, and your calendar connects itself into your accounts and other applications. The contacts function is especially interesting because it organizes emails and meetings by person, so you can always be on the same page. It also includes their social media presence and other details to keep everyone connected.
If you’re running late for a meeting, the app allows you to notify your contacts via email or text. If you find yourself needing to do a lot of conference calls, just put the number and passcode in the calendar entry and Tempo will allow you to dial in in one click. Tempo is also great for travel and will offer you flight information as well as directions and parking info for once you arrive. The Tempo smart calendar is completely free and available on the App Store.
What other business apps have you found useful? Let us know in the comments.
