Amplify Your Business With Mobile Apps
Are you up-to-date on the best apps for business?
Important hallmarks of successful entrepreneurs include the ability to maximize personal productivity and to find streamlined ways to manage both your tasks and employees. Fortunately, technology aptly zeros in on these qualities, offering an ever-changing array of mobile app solutions.
Top rated marketing apps
Aaron Strout, president of global integrated marketing and communication agency WCG, blogs monthly for Marketing Land, a daily online publication that covers all aspects of the digital marketing industry. His focus is to highlight the best apps for marketers.
Strout’s Top 20 Most Useful Business Apps feature both newer and tried-and-true recommendations covering everything from self-management to travel, social media, enterprise productivity and collaboration apps. Three examples:
- Expensify – scan and categorize receipts to manage expenses on the go
- Confluence – create documents, organize plans and collaborate with others digitally
- LinkedIn – still a leader in business network apps, recently upgraded to be faster and more useful
Cloudwards 30 apps for business efficiency
Cloudwards has prepared their own list of trend setting apps for business, which focuses on ways to take your office efficiency to whole new level. « Small businesses usually have limited budgets as well as only a handful of staff. The idea behind using the apps below is that of maximizing productivity and so save you time and money. »
The list includes favorites for accounting, scheduling, cloud storage, data backup and productivity, but our three highlights include:
- Quickbooks Online – a cloud-based accounting app that helps you keep on top of your accounting and invoicing
- Doodle – a brilliant solution for scheduling meetings based on team member availability. Do yourself a favor and check it out asap.
- Google Drive – part of the Google family of products, Drive is touted as the « holy grail of cloud storage » and a must-have app for any business
Security and mobility top the list of app concerns
The website tech.co, featuring startup news, events and mobile resources, shares even further app advice in their article, Prepare For These Mobile App Predictions. The list counsels businesses to use apps to create « more personal engagement with consumers. »
It also hails enterprise mobility (basically handling business infrastructure and connection to staff, consumers, etc. via apps) as a key trend for this year. As you might guess, app security is also a hot topic.
Develop your own app like a pro
There are apps for building apps as well. One handy tool is BuildFire, a leading global mobile application development platform choice for businesses, organizations, professionals, and resellers. The intuitive system and US-based customer support helps thousands of users build mobile apps every week. In fact, more than 50,000 businesses have already used the « click and edit » platform to create custom mobile apps for smartphones, tablets and mobile websites – no technical skills are necessary. It’s free to build your app, followed by reasonable monthly fees once published.
Getting on board with mobile technology is definitely worthwhile. Recently Gartner Inc., a world leader in IT research and advisory, announced by 2018, 50 percent of consumers in mature markets will use smartphones or wearables for mobile payments. « Innovation in apps, mobile devices and mobile services are impacting traditional business models, particularly in the way people use personal technology for productivity and pleasure, » said Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner. « Product managers must understand who their customers are for these new devices and services, and how the products are being used. Knowing your customer is imperative in order to capture a fair share of spending opportunities in this dynamic marketplace. »
This article originally appeared on Liquid Capital on February 5, 2016, with new updates added in April, 2017.
