Six free mobile apps to help your small business

(Posted on 27/06/16)

With so many free and budget tools readily available to us it is easy for SME’s to forget that careful curation is the secret to staying organised. Between handling customers, keeping track of work schedules and organising your travel itinerary, running a business is hard work. If you’re looking to increase productivity and organisation these free apps might be exactly what you need.

• Slack – This app comes with the tagline ‘be less busy’, and that’s exactly what you will be. You can organise your team conversations in open channels, enabling you to organise the way your business communicates. You can make a channel for a project, a topic, a team, anything – everyone has a transparent view of what’s going on
• Trip It – This acts as a travel itinerary and trip planner. It enables you to forward your confirmation emails and get your master itinerary and access your plans from anywhere. No more overflowing, confusing diaries
• 30/30 – This is great for simple time management. It calculates a schedule where you can focus on a task for 30 minutes at a time, before moving on to the next, meaning you can utilise your time more efficiently
• Send anywhere - This file moving device file allows you to move any file of any size quickly and easily. Your recipient receives a six digit code which allows them to receive your file. It eliminates the headache of compressing file sizes due to the no file size limit
• Invite – This meeting organisation app allows you to send out multiple possible meeting times and lets potential invitees vote on which times work best for them. With invite you can efficiently organise meeting, meaning less time is wasted
• Room – This video conferencing app allows you to communicate with people anywhere and on any device. You receive a unique link, which can be shared with up to three other people, and you’re off. The service works across multiple platforms, so people can join from android phones, macs and PCs.

Whilst these apps may be useful in increasing efficiency and organisation in your business, it is advisable to check that they can be used in agreement with EU data handling regulations or your client’s own policies.