South Africans rely on their mobile devices more and more to run their businesses and stay on top of their affairs. ERNST WITTMANN os ALCATEL ONETOUCH puts together a list of smartphone apps that will help entrepreneurs keep things running smoothly.
South African entrepreneurs depend on their mobile devices to run their businesses, with an increasing number using cloud-based apps to stay on top of their affairs wherever they go. Indeed, many small business owners are spending more time getting things done on smartphones and tablets than they do working on a notebook or a desktop.
With bandwidth costs lower than ever and Wi-Fi nearly everywhere, small business owners and employees can be productive wherever they are. Thanks to the growing affordability of smartphones with large displays and the great selection of apps on the market, today’s SME can operate completely on-the-go. Here are a few of our favourite apps for the mobile entrepreneur.
Collaboration – Slack
Slack is a collaboration platform that brings all your communication together in one place. It is real-time messaging, file sharing, archiving and search for modern teams. It’s affordable even for small businesses and is a great way to drive collaboration when employees might not often be together in the same building. It also integrates with many tools that businesses already use, such as Dropbox, Trello and Zendesk.
Customer relationship management – Zoho
Most good CRM systems today have apps for the popular smartphone platforms. Zoho CRM Mobile Edition, for example, is a native application that lets you access your CRM data anywhere, anytime from your mobile phones. This enables you to stay on top of the latest business developments, collaborate with your team and make the right business decisions, no matter where you are.
Accounting – Xero or Sage One
A decent online accounting package will help you keep your business running with a solid mobile app. You really should not have to go back to your office any more to reconcile, send invoices, add receipts and create expense claims – your accounting software should have an app that lets you do it from a mobile device.
Expense management – Expensify
Expensify streamlines the whole process of managing expenses for a small business owner and his or her team. It makes capturing receipts, tracking time or mileage, business travel and creating expense reports quick and easy, sparing headaches for everyone.
Productivity – Google Docs, Sheets and Slides
Google’s office productivity suite is clean, attractive and powerful. Apps included are word processor Docs, spreadsheet editor Sheets, and presentation maker Slides. Managing even complex documents is relatively simple and the suite is compatible with Microsoft Office files, so you can transition between your desktop computer and your mobile device.