Summary
Remote working has received a big boost lately because of the coronavirus outbreak. Many companies are now sending their employees to start working from remote. Some companies have even tried to become a 100% remote company. But remote working has been a trend for quite some time now, even before the virus outbreak. For a company to successfully send employees and start working from remote, you need to have some tools ready to ensure a smooth working environment. Let’s look at some of these tools.
Managing communication when remote
The first thing when working remotely, you have to think of is communication. There won’t be any face to face communication. Communication is essential not just for task solving but also for idea flow. That is why you have to encourage it even remotely. The only difference is that it is now online. In order to do so you need tools for communication and video-conferencing.
The tools for frequent communication and for keeping the people in your company connected are tools for instant messaging and video-conferencing. An excellent tool for this is Slack. It makes it possible for people to chat and write informal communication and thus keeping the task solving and idea flow of the company rolling.
Although you are working remotely, you will have to schedule meetings for your team and your clients. Picking the right tool for this is very important. You don’t want technical interruptions during your calls. Meetings are an essential contributor to boosting morale and lifting team spirit.
Tools that are great for this are Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, and Slack.
Managing tasks
Because you and your team will have less oversight on tasks, it is advised to use a task managing software. It is where you create To-Do list, schedule timelines, assign teammates, etc.
There are also extended features like time tracking. Managing tasks becomes essential so that you don’t lose the feeling of control and company performance.
A tool we use for this is Linear for task management and Timely . Alternately you can use, for example, Trello.
Cloud storage
The next step is to think about document flow. For the sharing and collaboration on documents and files, you need a file-sharing software. They can be quite different to use, so chose them wisely. Tools like Google Drive or Dropbox come in handy.
Receive mail by email
When going remote, do not forget about the daily office tasks you must do, like picking up the mail. You can’t pick up your mail if you are remote. Therefore try to redirect your incoming invoices and other documents to your email. We bet that partners will gladly send you invoices and other documents by email. Afterall they are saving money on stamps, envelopes, and paper. Using an automated scheduler for picking documents from the email can be your first step towards automation.
Lowering boring and repetitive tasks
Monotonous and repetitive tasks can get even more annoying when working remotely. Manual entry of data from invoices is a perfect example of that. Automate those tasks to lower the time spend. Your employees need to stay motivated and feel like they are making an excellent contribution to the company.
While the tedious, repetitive task might seem like a valuable contribution while being in office, they may not feel the same working remotely. Why is that? Fetching a mail or doing some administrative task for somebody else, gets you a smile, and a thank you. On remote, this won’t be the case, at least not so often.
Knowing that you should think about automation software solutions. One of those is Typless. It is an automated document data extraction service. Using it, your employees can focus on more productive and less tedious tasks. It will lift their morale and increase productivity.
The last call – CRM
If your sales team does not have a CRM tool think about one, CRM is a must when working remotely. You want to keep track of which clients have been contacted, what their status is, etc. It is essential to avoid double calling or missing important deadlines. Solutions like Salesforce or Zoho fit in this category.
Conclusion
Working from your home can be just as much or even more productive than working from the office. But before you start this policy, you have to get ready for it. When working remotely, it is essential to use all the abilities of software tools. With all those tools available, don’t forget to talk to your employees. They may be facing different issues than the ones we mentioned here. Ask them what their problems are. Maybe they are as simple as an uncomfortable chair.