Much of our everyday tasks are managed in the cloud. In fact, we run more than half of our daily business systems off of the cloud. We wanted to take just a bit of your time and share them with you - perhaps you'll find something here you can incorporate into your own business, making it more productive in the process.
Briefly, in case you're not familiar with the term, the "cloud" refers to the delivery of computing, or software, as a service rather than a prouct (SAAS = software as a service). An easy example would be Gmail or Hotmail. If you've ever checked your email online, you're using the cloud. If you're using Outlook, a program installed on your computer, you're not. Now, forget email. Think instead of an accounting program, or your favourite text editing or spreadsheet program, or even an image manipulation program. Forget CDs, forget installation, forget system requirements. Each one of these programs have numerous cloud equivalents which, as long as there's an internet connection, you can access from anywhere in the world, from any computer.
With that in mind, here's a list of some of the business productivity tools we're currently using:
Dropbox is the popular favourite when it comes to quickly and easily sharing files. A desktop widget, an easy upload and download process and a whole lot more, Dropbox is our preferred choice for sharing files. The Free package comes with a whopping 2GB of space, which should be more than enough for the average user (case in point, we haven't needed to upgrade and we share a lot of files). Perfect for a company who needs a central location to share files (documents, images, etc.) internally or with clients without the hassle of uploading to their FTP site.
| Visit Dropbox |
Seeing as Google's taking over the world, it should come as no surprise they have a suite of programs have virtually done away with the need for Microsoft Office, and pretty much everything else.. A fantastic email system (Gmail), a document editing program with online collaboration (Docs), a calendar application (the aptly name Calendar), AdSense, Analytics, Groups, and the list goes on. There's very little Google Apps doesn't do and even the things it doesn't do great are still much better than the alternative (e.g. anything Microsoft is offering...).
| Visit Google Apps |
New Zealand has given mankind a lot of really great things over the centuries. There's bungee jumping, the disposable syringe, the tranquilzer gun, crazy sheep shearing techniques, and an inordinate number of flightless birds. They've also given us Xero, a fantastic cloud-based accounting system. We trust Xero for all of our accounting needs - bank reconciliation, accounts payable & receivable, reporting, expense claims, specialized accountant-only login, and a whole lot more. Their customer support is also superb, a key feature which can't be overlooked when your company's books are at stake. As icing on the cake, Xero has also just introduced live bank feeds - fantastic!! All in all, we would highly recommend Xero for your account needs.
| Visit Xero |
MailChimp is our go-to email marketing system. We've used it on numerous email campaigns and have been impressed at its ease of use and, arguably even more important, it's analytics. It's one thing to send out an email campaign but if you have no idea what people are doing with it (assuming it even arrives), the campaign is useless. MailChimp makes measuring the effectiveness of your email campaign child's play (not like the movie though - that would be terrifying). Wondering how many people opened your campaign? MailChimp will tell you. Want to know how many people clicked on your campaign via Twitter? MailChimp can tell you that as well. Heck, you can even find out what country someone was in when they opened your campaign. Pure awesomeness. If you're a little nervous about where to start, you're offered a whopping 36 templates to choose from to get the ball rolling. After that, it's just a matter of dropping in your content, testing it until you're not quite as petrified that something might go wrong, uploading your contact list, and voila - campaign sent.
| MailChimp |
We're relatively new to Bit.ly but so far, we've been impressed. Let's say you want to share this link on Facebook, Twitter, whatever. You post it for all of your friends and then get hate mail because the link took up half their screen. This is where Bit.ly comes in. Just copy and paste that ginormous link into their incredibly-easy-to-find link shortening text box and presto, it now looks like this: http://bit.ly/oizkOc. Sure, you could argue Twitter already automatically shorten links, to which we would respond, "Yes, but does Twitter analyze your shortened URLs and tell you how many people clicked on each link? No? Get Bit.ly." Anyone can shorten and post links, but how do you know if your URLs are actually driving traffic? When it comes to web, analyzing results is absolutely vital. Bit.ly does its bit to fill the void.
| Visit Bit.ly |
Due to the nature of our business, we're constantly sending out PDFs of concepts, revisions, and final artwork to our clients for feedback and approvals. It's not difficult to send these files out via email, the challenge is being able to collaborate in real time, especially when deadlines are tight are there are multiple people involved in the approval process. This is where ProofHQ comes in handy. ProofHQ is an online collabortation tool that gives our clients a central location to leave comments on submitted artwork, request and approve changes, see a historical overview of modifications, and even download these files for filing purposes - and it does all of this in real time. This cuts down on email volume and the potential for crossing wires especially if there are numerous files going back and forth within a short span of time. ProofHQ isn't just for designers though. You might find it useful if you require feedback on a new sales pitch and your sales team is spread across the country, or send out a document internally and have everyone leave their feedback - again, in one central location. Give the free trial a spin if you're interested in learning more.
| Visit ProofHQ |
There are virtually dozens and dozens of project management apps out there right now, with more being released every week. We've test driven virtually every single one in what seemed like a never ending quest to find that perfect project and task management app that filled all of our needs - time tracking, task management and delegation, multiple users, milestones, notes, team collaboration, contact manager, calendar, reports, etc. ProWorkFlow delivered, and then some. It was a massive find for us and we haven't looked back since.
| Visit ProWorkFlow |
Not all email providers are alike. We found this out the hard way when our accounts were compromised a few years back and we were without email for three days. The tech support we were naturally relying on to fix the problem was suddenly non existent. This made us sit back and think carefully about what measures we needed to implement to ensure this never happened again. After testing a number of a different email providers, we finally settled on FuseMail. Their customer support is top notch and best of all responsive and their prices are industry standard. Their webmail services, often an eyesore for most email providers, is nothing short of perfect - some of the staff members here actually prefer working in the online web mail space vs. Outlook. This is a huge bonus for us especially when it comes to checking emails on a mobile device or offsite on another computer. Spam settings that actually work, email aliases, autoresponders, etc. etc. round out this complete email solution. 10/10.
| Visit FuseMail |