6 Products and Services That Make Work Easier, Faster and Less Stressful

Over the past decade, the way we work has utterly transformed and continues to evolve at speed. We are now working remotely and flexibly on a whole host of different devices, and as such technologies have developed and new innovations have been rolled out to enable this.

This explosion of connectedness has not come without its challenges, leaving many struggling to keep pace with the never-ending barrage of notifications. Understanding how to get more done without necessarily working a longer working day can be a constant battle.

Flexible working has been shown to boost employee productivity, with a recent survey by the Association of Accounting Technicians revealing that employees worked effectively for more of a typical working day than those working a traditional ‘nine-to-five’ job, by taking less leave and working more productively. On the flipside, flexible workers estimated they were putting in an extra 6.7 hours each week.

We should always aim to work smarter and not harder in order to achieve success. While some view their working lives as the pinnacle of their success, it’s important to remember that life should be about maintaining balance, rather than working every waking hour of the day.

Productivity is never an accident. Getting it right requires planning, focus and commitment. Here are some of the key products, apps and software which are helping employees thrive: working anytime, anywhere and still staying connected to wider teams.

Asana – Work management tool

Asana is a work management tool that helps teams organise and manage all of their work, from small projects to strategic initiatives. Founded in 2008 by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-Google-and-Facebook engineer Justin Rosenstein, Asana was created with the purpose of eliminating ‘work about work’ – the pointless tasks of attempting to find information or attending status meetings – ‘work’ that isn’t focused, or productive.

Asana is designed to help teams organise, track, and manage their work. With Asana, each person knows what they should be doing and why. This clarity, transparency, and focus allows teams to collaborate with less friction and produce great results.

Asana has more than 60,000 paying organizations and millions of free organizations across 195 countries. Global customers such as AB-InBev, Airbnb, NASA, Uber and Vox Media rely on Asana to manage everything from tracking company objectives to delivering digital transformation, from running product launches through to marketing campaigns.

Slack – Where work happens

Slack is a communication tool that brings together people, data, and applications – it’s a single place where people can effectively work together, find important information, and ultimately do their best work. From FTSE 100 companies to corner shops, businesses and teams of all kinds use Slack to bring the right people together with all the right information. Companies from Monzo and Vodafone.

Pipedrive – CRM built to accelerate business growth

Pipedrive, is the first CRM platform built from the salesperson’s point of view. Pipedrive helps businesses accelerate growth, streamlining the way they manage critical sales relationships, offering greater visibility and helping to drive actions that can help supercharge business trajectory. It also integrates with more than 100 popular business tools, including Google Apps, Trello, Zapier, MailChimp, Xero, Yesware, and PandaDoc.

Founded in Estonia in 2010, the company has grown to attract over 85,000 customers across the world, including Amazon, Skyscanner, The Next Web and Vimeo. The company has over 550 employees and seven offices in six countries, and has raised $90 million in funding to date.

Prezi – Engaging presentation platform

Founded in 2009, Prezi enables professionals across the world to create compelling presentations, increase collaboration and boost engagement with any audience. Prezi’s mission is to reinvent how people share knowledge, tell stories and inspire their audiences to act.

What differentiates Prezi from other presentation platforms is its open, zoomable canvas that has been scientifically proven to be more powerful than linear formats, such as slides. In fact, Harvard researchers revealed that Prezi presentations are more organised, engaging, effective and persuasive than either PowerPoint or oral presentations. This is particularly important at a time when people’s attention spans are evolving and visual content with a strong narrative is required to capture and retain an audience’s attention.

Prezi has an impressive client portfolio including Fujitsu, Unicef, Cisco, BMW, Salesforce, Lufthansa and many more, and a global community of over 100 million users.

Sony TEOS – Workplace management solution

Sony’s complete suite of TEOS workplace management solutions helps organisations create a working environment where employees can work smarter, more productively and more efficiently. Anyone who has ever worked in a corporate environment can understand how frustrating and time-consuming even basic tasks, such as booking a room or sharing content to a screen, can be. TEOS has been designed to overcome these challenges. From tablets outside meetings rooms that show when and for how long the rooms are occupied for, to integrated room-booking applications and solutions that seamlessly and instantaneously allow users to share content to and from any connected device; TEOS helps organisations create an environment in which working in simplified, collaboration is enhanced and productivity is boosted.

Alteryx – Self-service data analytics

Revolutionising business through data science and analytics, Alteryx offers an end-to-end analytics platform that empowers ‘everyday’ data analysts and data scientists alike to break data barriers, deliver insights, and experience the thrill of getting to the answer faster. Organisations all over the world rely on Alteryx daily to deliver actionable insights to discover new trends, insights, and drive incremental value through efficiencies.

Not everyone can be a qualified data scientist or learn to code to use clunky business intelligence solutions to answer their questions about their own data. With a self-serve, no jargon, drag and drop interface, the world of data analytics is open to all.