10 Tools Highly Effective Managers Use
Despite their abilities to lead, communicate, and delegate, even the most successful managers in the world can benefit from incorporating new tools and technologies in their companies. While all of these tools stress different objectives—from automating processes to organizing your team—each contains features that can help streamline your processes and keep you in contact with your team. Get ready for the manager of the year award!
Procurify
Photo Credit: Procurify
Supply chain management and procurement processes have never been easier than with Procurify software. Priding itself on making the job ridiculously easy, Procurify offers users a myriad of options that cut down ordering delays, speed up approvals at all levels of management, help users create purchase orders and much more. Additional amenities include real-time budgets, time analytics, built-in customer service and unlimited data export.
Trello
This organization software arranges lists in an array of cards, enabling managers to handle projects of any size. Its features also allow you to track the status of an assignment regardless of where it exists in the workflow. Trello fosters better communication via sections dedicated to comments and discussion, includes easy-to-use calendars and can by synced with all of your devices. Think of it as an online to-do list.
Wrike
Larger organizations speak very highly of this software because it helps you manage projects involving more than 15 users. The big difference from most organization software is its interface with hierarchical folders instead of cards, which allows teams to determine the process of their own workflows. Instead of due dates and deadlines as a criteria, Wrike includes several components like task dependencies, workload management, milestones and visual reports to detail more vividly the status of a project.
Slack
Photo Credit: Slack
Workplace communication 2.0 is here. The biggest advantage of this software is its ability to integrate all the software you use under one roof—a bonus if you”re on your smartphone going from app to app. Slack cuts down on this inconvenience by integrating with loads of external services for more timely communication. It also lets your team discuss via an array of open and closed channels for convenience and security.
Kindling
If you”re the type of manager who is constantly coming up with new ideas and grand schemes, Kindling is right up your alley. This app can help your idea materialize from conception to completion by letting you bounce around ideas in company discussion forums, analyze perspectives and collect information to ensure whatever innovation you have in mind becomes a reality.
Quip
Created specifically mobile users, Quip allows you to communicate with your colleagues without the delays of email and unhampered by the cumbersome properties of social media. This productivity suite allows you to chat in one virtual destination and comes with an easy-to-customize task list and editing features. This allows everyone on your team to make their changes to the same document simultaneously.
Evernote
Photo Credit: Evernote
For voracious note-takers who don”t want to have a slew of yellow sticky notes littering their desks, Evernote offers an opportunity to preserve those inspirations without sacrificing space and time. Whether it”s an innovative idea or a project modification, this software arranges those sparks of imagination in an easy-to-navigate interface designed with information-gathering and discussion features.
Typeform
Looking for input from your colleagues without getting a plethora of comments or calling a meeting? Typeform offers a quick and easy way to generate a survey on your smartphone to gauge the mindset of your workforce. Its user-friendly features let you enter text and create as many types of responses as you wish. It”s also great for company morale, as Typeform can be used to create fun quizzes and contests.
Skitch
Photo Credit: Skitch
The notion that a picture is worth a thousand words don’t just apply to the art world; the business community has caught up to the fact that if you can”t make a statement with more than a few words, it probably isn’t worth saying. Skitch provides users with the ability to get a point across with simple but effective illustration tools, symbols, and graphics. Help your recipients and employees get the picture—literally.
Some of these applications are free while others require you to dip into your wallet, but all of them are designed to keep your operations running faster, smoother, and more efficiently. From consolidating company information to making business communication easier, these are only some of the tools available to maximize the performance of yourself, your workers, and your company.
