Everything that you need right at your fingertips—that is the essence of mobile business in a few words. Whatever line it belongs to, be it iPhone, Blackberry, T Mobile, or Motorola Droid Razr, a mobile phone is small enough to fit into the pocket or the palm of the hand, yet it is powerful enough to contain all the information that you need to run your business without having to wait until you can sit down at your PC or laptop. Just turn on your smartphone for taking your business mobile and you can:
- talk with subordinates, employees and colleagues to get up to date on what is happening at the office
- store and view information
- take down notes as they occur to you
- go online to keep track of one’s business site and do research on the latest developments in the field
- view and share files that have been stored in the cloud
- use any of the various business apps that have been designed for smartphones (more on those below)
Mobile Business
It can however be confusing when you are “taking your business mobile.” There are files to transfer and programs to download. How do you stay organized throughout the entire process? Here are a number of tips to help you to do so.
1. Being systematic about the transition :
When making your mobile phone part of your business activity, you should have your plans for the process laid out in advance so that you can see what needs to be done. Let your subordinates know that such a transition will be made so that they can be prepared for it. Going mobile will be an advantage for them as it will be for you because they can remain in contact with each other even when they are not working, which in turn will enable them to convey new information as soon as it comes up. They will also have each other’s contact information at their fingertips.
Keep the goals of your business in mind. Do research on the apps that are available and decide which ones you need for your particular purposes.
2. Three apps that can keep things in order :
As mentioned above, thousands of mobile apps are out there for businesses and many more are continually being created. Many of these apps are perfect for organizational purposes. Most of them can be downloaded for free. Among them are the following three that have been recommended on the blog site of Constant Contacts:
a. Evernote for keeping notes :
Whenever something occurs to you and you want to be able to remember it, all you have to do is jot it down in Evernote, which works with virtually every brand of phone or computer. This app is not useful only for writing things either—you can use it to take snapshots and even make audio recordings! Browser extensions are also available so that you can keep track of your favorite websites. Scanned travel documents, scheduled appointments, maps, documents—it can all be kept here and shared with friends and colleagues. The logo for this app, incidentally, features the elephant—that proverbial animal that never forgets.
b. Whiteboard Capture for keeping records of meetings:
When you meet with people it is a good idea to maintain a record of what was discussed. That is where Whiteboard Capture comes in handy. Images can also be pasted into the file–you just have to take a picture with the phone and remove all “artifacts”–and it is easy to move them from one folder to another, save them to the photo library and sync them to your PC.
c. DropBox for working with your team :
The ever popular DropBox is one of the most common ways of storing files “in the cloud” that can then be shared with colleagues. Anyone can have access to the files as long as he has been invited to view them. The group can edit the files to the same place with their own devices so there is no danger of exchanging different versions of the same file.
