The need to improve efficiency and cut costs has led businesses to continually invest in new technology. Software applications meant to improve productivity are being utilized in almost all business organizations today. From the scheduling of meetings to the assignment of tasks to workers, these productivity apps are the very core of business workflow today.
There are apps built to serve the mass market by giant tech companies such as Google and Microsoft. However, there are solutions that are built for specific industries and can be customized or tweaked to fit the needs of a particular business. In the latter case, it is important to look at the most important components of custom business productivity apps.
Automation of Mundane and Repetitive Tasks
Any custom-built productivity app should help increase efficiency by freeing employees from repetitive tasks. Routine tasks often take up valuable hours from otherwise skilled employees who should do higher-level work.
In fact, repetitive and administrative tasks often take away the excitement from employees’ work. Therefore, automating tasks such as sending invoices once a field-service task will increase job satisfaction levels at your organization.
According to research, the service industry loses more than $5 trillion in productivity to administrative and repetitive tasks. This is equivalent to 69 days of the year going to such tasks. As such, any organization that is able to automate a large portion of mundane tasks gets more value per dollar on skilled labor.
Increase Employee Engagement
It is important for organizations to make sure that their most important staff feel that they are utilizing their skills at the highest level. Custom built productivity apps should help them achieve just that.
Today, enterprise software comes with complex functionalities such that employees can build no-code solutions to solve problems without needing help from IT or data science experts. The ability to build custom apps empowers even non-technical staff to improve their workflows.
A good example would be software that aggregates manufacturing data in a firm. The custom-built software could enable staff members to develop queries to deduce or predict problems, opportunities for improvement and much more. Placing such capabilities makes work more intellectually satisfying and helps improve staff retainment rates.
Productivity Apps Reduce Errors
Custom built productivity apps greatly improve quality levels in instances where reliance on humans carries the risk of errors. Take for instance a situation where a company starts using a digital inventory control system in a warehouse. Before such implementation, inventory would be counted and recorded by humans. Such humans work in shifts and are prone to fatigue. The new system greatly improves accuracy and minimizes the risk of fraud.
Automation of records provides real-time data and visibility into trends that provides new opportunities for improvement. For instance, the business can see in real-time when items go below the re-order levels or when there is a sudden uptick in demand for a particular product.
Productivity Apps Should Help Manage Staff Better
The new generation of workers today expect more flexibility in their work schedule. In fact, remote workers currently make up at least one third of all workers. As such, custom productivity apps should help the organizations they are built for manage their human resources. For instance, a custom human resource management app should help ease the onboarding of new staff into a team by giving access to all training and orientation material they need.
When it comes to assigning and management of tasks, productivity apps should provide a comprehensive dashboard for those responsible for assigning such tasks. For instance, for a field service company, it should be possible to assign tasks based on a technician’s skill, current location, workload, and availability of resources necessary to complete the task. Similarly, when working with staff in different countries, a manager can assign work taking into account time-differences based on locations.
Connecting Data from Different Sources and Departments
A good custom productivity app should collect and centralize business data from the different operations it helps facilitate. Today, it is not odd to find a single system providing inventory control, customer management, and supply chain control capabilities.
The custom productivity application should provide visibility of data from these functions to those who need for decision making within the organization. It will improve the quality of decisions made and as a result the overall return on investment in the system.
Improving Communication and Collaboration Between Staff
A productivity app must make it easier for people within an organization to work better together. First, by having inbuilt communication, it minimizes reliance on third party messaging and email applications. Staff should be able to share files, comment on shared files, and share suggestions. By bringing all communication on one platform, it makes it easier to track the progress of projects.
Think of a situation where staff working in-house might need to consult or collaborate with a remote consultant. The more capabilities the productivity app has integrated into it the more the likelihood of successful collaboration. Some of these features would be video conferencing, visualization of data, and remote presentations.
Productivty App Integration with Other Apps
In cases where a company is relying on several applications to get functions done, it is crucial that new custom productivity apps be able to integrate with the existing ones. Often, you will find organizations relying on mass-market tools that they need to integrate with custom built solutions. It is important that the custom tools work seamlessly to avoid interruptions in your workflow.
Building Custom Productivity Apps for your Business
Getting a custom solution to workflow products has great benefits instead of more generic solutions. Every team of employees works differently and what was built for another style may not always work for your team. In addition, every business has unique routine tasks it would like to automate. Transcendent Software helps businesses improve efficiency by building software in different forms. These include websites, desktop applications, mobile apps, as well as back-end integrations of systems. We can step in at any point in your software development cycle and take you all the way through to deployment and training. To learn more about our software development and other services, check out our website.