With the current mandatory shut-down and stay-at-home orders in place, many companies have positioned themselves for remote work.
While working from home is not the same as being onsite (especially if you were not used to it), it is possible to pivot both your workflow and your mindset, all while staying on track with your projects.
Here at GreenCup Digital, we have some experience in this as we’ve been a remote team of professionals since the beginning. Sure, working remotely requires some trust, but if you’ve worked hard to establish a crew of loyal team members, the transition to the remote world should not pose a huge problem.
We’ve rounded up the best in collaborative software, which allows teams to work from home and communicate effectively. (without blowing up “inbox zero”). Email is fine for quick communication, but when you are managing projects and tasks, everyone on the team needs to be in on the conversation.
A good collaboration tool will make all the difference.
GreenCup Digital’s Top Collaborative Tools for Working From Home
1.Basecamp
Basecamp is an online collaboration tool where teams can work on projects, events, or other assignments together. With Basecamp, you break up your work into separate projects and each project contains everything related to this project and the tasks required. This means every person, every discussion, every file, task, date…everything! Basically you have every tool to manage what needs to be done; from assigning items to setting set due dates.
With a sandbox-style, there is lots of room for freeform discussion which fosters communication. Basecamp is affordable, which makes it a great option for small businesses, with plenty of room to grow, without the price tag growing along with you.
2.Slack
Slack is one of the first collaboration tools on the map. It has millions of users around the world, so they must be doing something right. The platform is available online and mobile with an easy to use interface. Slack uses “channels” to organize their conversations. There are public and private channels, the latter being nice for interaction with smaller teams, in addition to direct channels being available to message directly to colleagues.
The cool thing about Slack is it integrates feeds from social media into the application and combines with other conversations. These messages, notifications, and other files are archived and available for search later. (Have you ever tried to search an inbox?) Slack is a robust tool that is appropriate for teams of any size.
3. Asana
Asana is one of the oldest collaboration tools – it’s been around since 2008. The design in Asana makes it easy for businesses to track the work of their employees in order to get the best results. You can create to-do lists, set reminders, and send requests. Team members can also assign comments to posts inside the app.
There are two ways to organize your projects – list or board form – and can you can search for your work easily.
4. Zoom
If you haven’t heard about Zoom yet, then you must be living in a cave. Zoom has become the number one video conferencing tool to use during the pandemic. Not only are you able to make video calls while working from home, but it’s also turning out to be the tool of choice for hosting virtual happy hours and meetups!
Zoom has a generous free plan, great performance, nice features for both hosts and participants, and is also easy to use. Even in light of recent security concerns, the company has been quick to address the problems transparently.
At $14.99 per month, Zoom is a great alternative for smaller teams.
5. WebinarJam
If you are a marketer, sell something, or offer services of any kind, chances are you are or have looked into hosting a webinar online for your prospects. A webinar is a fantastic way to interact with your prospects, talk with them, and move them through your sales process.
A good webinar software makes it easy for you to record, share, and follow up with your participants. Other things to consider are video quality, features (like surveys, pools or chat), and marketing automation.
WebinarJam is an all in one webinar software that is great for the first time user. It is easy to set up, even if you have no prior technical experience. Key features include automatic recording, customer support, auto-responder email functionality included, social media integration, among many more.
Tip: Zoom offers webinar features, so if you’re already subscribed to Zoom, it may be worth the upgrade.
We’re all swimming in uncharted waters.
Moving your business online will most likely present some challenges. Thankfully, there are tools that are made for real people who don’t have the time to spend learning a complicated software package.
Which one of these tools have you tried?
