Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Mobile Tools for Managers or any professional to Enhance Productivity

Mobile Tools for Managers or any professional to Enhance Productivity

The ability to manage different tasks all at once, is a prerequisite to success as a manager, whatever the field you are in. Right from managing stakeholders to planning tasks, scheduling meetings, brainstorming for new ideas or troubleshooting—multi-tasking is the way to go. Yet, this does not allow you any leeway with accuracy and exactness. The solutions you propose or implement must be flawless! So, how do you manage the onslaught of multiple tasks as a manager? Use technology and your best buddy the mobile phone, to your advantage and sail through your workday!

Managers also need to be ready with answers—a key aspect in relationship building. Be it an internal stakeholder, or an external client, “always on” is the bare basic expectation. Expect to work remotely, even at odd hours, to deliver what is desired. Sounds intimidating? Worry not, for mobile phones today come with a slew of organizing and management applications. Let’s dig into some of those!

Manage To-Dos smoothly: Professional life is more often than not a long list of to-dos. Give your to-dos shape and character by installing list-making applications on your smartphone. Track the progress of that latest project, or remember to call your boss on his/her birthday with inbuilt reminders and deadline features. Many listing applications allow lists to be shared with colleagues and teams. Now, never miss out on communicating an agenda, just share notes with your team virtually and stay updated! Evernote, Google Keep and Wunderlist, are some interesting ones to consider.

Make Knowledge, share knowledge, secure knowledge: As the subject matter expert, you may find hordes of colleagues flocking to you for advice or experience-sharing. It is a great idea to initiate a knowledge management initiative that allows you a wider reach with streamlined efforts. Be sure to secure the system with proper backup mechanisms, because in case of an outage, all the efforts may go in vain. Choose a secure online backup mechanism or solution provider in adherence with domain compliances. Look for easy and quick data restoration options, cloud-based flexible storage and security layers. Leveraging knowledge for advancement also entails managing the knowledge well.

Be productive with Office 365: Making and delivering presentations, speech scripts, analyzing the latest balance sheet on Excel—the list of enterprise software-dependent tasks is endless. Imagine if you have to work while you are not at your desktop. How do you access all those latest versions remotely? Thankfully, Office 365 comes with Cloud backup capabilities, allowing you access from any device, from anywhere. Cloud-based productivity suites are a must, especially for flexible work environments such as, telecommuting, flexi-working and geographically spread virtual teams. Conduct a long-distance interview using Skype for Business, or collaborate for the latest idea real-time, with IM. One person or multiple-person interfaces must be taken advantage of, to get work done as you want.

Streamline the logistics and operations: Believe it or not, a significant part of our time at work is spent in transactional or operational tasks, which though not value-adding, are equally important. Even the basics for the administration department, such as, ordering of food during working lunches can be greatly simplified by using ready apps. Rev up the efficiency on the mundane and allocate more time to the value-adding work. Try out applications such as Uber (for transport), taskRabbit (for couriers) and ZeroCater (for food delivery).

One stop shop for all tasks: Do you feel overwhelmed trying to juggle various tasks and staying updated on what needs to be done next? Managed services solution suites are for you. A centralised dashboard that provides real-time visibility into progress statuses, are now available as a mobile app. Right from vendor management to pushing the right communication, get the right enterprise product from the market and forget your woes of multi-management.

Being an effective manager, is an art as well as science. Knowing what to use and how to use to get things done, is a critical competency that few possess. Yet, you can fortify this skill by relying on the wonderful world of mobile! Learn to use your smartphone to your professional advantage and be “always on” with a smile!


Regards

Pralhad Jadhav

Senior Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co                                                                    


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