Remote businesses are not an exception anymore but rather the new normal. Online work has been a huge trend in the last few years, but now it is the primary business method in the world struck by the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the report, 55% of businesses globally offer some capacity for remote work. The remote workforce has grown by 44% over the last five years and 91% in the previous 10 years, respectively.
But what does it take to run a successful remote business? The answer lies in digital tools that make online collaboration possible in the first place. If you search the Web, you can find hundreds of more or less useful platforms designed with the goal to help online teams thrive.
In this post, you can learn about the nine best tools for running a productive remote business. Let’s take a look!
- Zoom
Zoom has become by far the most popular online conferencing platform during the COVID-19 pandemic, and for good reasons. It’s an all-encompassing communication platform that focuses mostly on video calls and group discussions.
Remote teams love Zoom because it enables free conferences for up to 100 participants – more than enough to host a typical business meeting. It comes with lots of other features such as social media streaming, cloud recording, company branding, and many more.
- Trello
If you need a project management tool (who doesn’t?), then you might as well try Trello. It’s a super-useful platform for business organizations that run complex projects. Here’s what you can do with Trello:
- Create and visualize a workflow to help everyone track their tasks and goals
- Make comments and insert attachments
- Use custom cards and board buttons
- Integrate the platform with dozens of third-party programs
- Evernote
Remote teams don’t have the privilege of meeting in-person every day and organizing quick brainstorming sessions, so it’s fundamental for everyone to write down and organize their ideas as soon as they come up with one.
Evernote helps you do that thanks to its simple and intuitive note-taking abilities. The app allows you to write down interesting ideas in textual and audio format, synchronize notes across multiple devices, search documents, create custom templates, and so on.
- Time Doctor
We are sure that you’re running a team of self-aware and reliable individuals, but every remote organization needs a tool such as Time Doctor to ensure the highest level of productivity in any given situation.
It’s a time-tracking program that allows you to see how your employees spend their time online. Apart from that, you can enjoy additional feature like:
- Web and app usage monitoring
- Automated screenshots for activity tracking
- Attendance tracking
- Project monitoring
- Detailed reports and analytics
- 1Password
With all those tools and online accounts, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of usernames and passwords. It doesn’t only make your remote business more complicated but also jeopardizes the overall security of the organization.
This is why so many virtual teams rely on 1Password to manage their accounts and ensure safe login attempts. The app works across all devices and it enables admin controls to view and manage permissions.
- Forest
What the heck is Forest? Although it doesn’t sound like a regular business tool, it actually makes an important addition to all of you remote professionals out there.
Namely, Forest is an anti-procrastination app that uses gamification elements to help people spend their time working and being productive. It controls your online activities, disables distractions, and gives you and your team the chance to do the things you are supposed to do in a given timeframe.
- Upwork
Upwork is not exactly a tool, but it does prove to be extremely useful for remote organizations that frequently recruit all types of business professionals. It’s a freelance platform that hosts more than two million remote workers from all over the globe.
Every freelancer has a public profile with a brief description and client testimonials, so you can easily identify top-performers and hire individuals who guarantee to get the project done timely and professionally.
- Survey Monkey
Team managers should always be looking for employee feedback, but it can be a little tricky to collect information remotely. In such circumstances, it’s good to have a tool such as Survey Monkey to organize opinion polls and ask your staff whatever you want to know.
The best thing about Survey Monkey is that you can launch anonymous polls, so people can express their thoughts clearly and honestly. Besides that, the platform comes with readymade templates and you don’t even need to bother with survey design.
- Encrypt
Finally, remote entrepreneurs have to take care of online security in order to protect the company and its employees. Encrypt gives you the opportunity to achieve this goal as it offers a wide range of digital security mechanisms.
The platform helps you share and transfer data securely and it also minimizes the risk of data intrusions, ransomware attacks, and malware attempts. Encrypt is simple and very affordable, which makes it suitable for remote teams of all sizes.
The Bottom Line
Modern collaboration platforms make it possible to run virtual businesses and successfully coordinate entire teams of employees, but sometimes it’s not so easy to pick the finest tools for your organization.
In this post, we showed you the best apps and platforms you could use to run a remote business. Do you plan to test any of them?
AUTHOR BIO Thomas Lanigan is an essay paper writer and a part-time blogger at several custom research paper writing services. He is also a tech geek who enjoys writing about the latest IT tools and web development practices. Besides that, Thomas is the father of a lovely toddle
