Last updated on June 14, 2023
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Work From Home – These Essential Tools and Apps Will Ease Your Job
Companies small and large, start-ups as well as individuals have come increasingly aware of the need to work from home (remote locations) rather than from an office. This has become necessary due to billions of man-hours going waste every year on long commutes between home and workplace. Prolonged commutes are notorious for the detrimental effects they have on staff or business productivity.
Work From Home – The Current scenario COVID- 19
The sudden outbreak of the dreadful Coronavirus COVID- 19 forced a major chunk of the tech employees to stuck at home. The compulsory lockdown declaration by the governmental authorities forced the management to allow their employees to work from home.
At this juncture, there is a lot of hope out there due to the advancement of technology. Yes, Thanks to advances in Internet technology and widespread availability of free and paid applications, working from home is fast gaining momentum worldwide. Further, smart-phones are becoming cheaper by the day, with manufacturers churning newer handsets alarming alacrity.
Hence, work from home and other remote locations with smartphones are also becoming very common.
Work from home is not just limited to Employees but for Women or Mom, Entrepreneurs who are handling their family and career together, working from home is no lesser than any boon.
The sudden outbreak of the dreadful Coronavirus COVID- 19 forced a major chunk of the tech employees to stuck at home. via #PVAriel Share on XWith all these favorable conditions growing around, many top companies already decided to go for a work from home job strategy for its employees as it requires low investment and saves a lot of commute time, money, and energy.
Being said that there many bogus offers flashing through the world wide web. Beware of such false advertisement and offers.
This in return has created a demand for various tools, apps, and software that make working from home more productive and efficient.
Work From Home – The Best apps and tools
Regardless, hundreds of very useful apps are now available for your computer, Android-based smart-phone or the chic iPhone. Here we list 10 most popular apps and tools that can help you work from home.
Regardless of whether you work for a company, own a start-up or run a small home-based business, these apps can help boost both- productivity and profits.
Work from Home – Group communication
Undoubtedly, communications form the most vital component of any job and business. Here, we recommend Workplace by Facebook, which is rather simple to use and does not consume much space on your computer or smart-phone memory.
Workplace by Facebook is a fairly new entrant into the market but its popularity outstrips most other contenders in the category. Workplace by Facebook is a great team collaboration platform. It allows team members the facilities of messaging, voice and video calling, and newsfeed features.
Cloud storage
Small and large companies, start-ups and home-based businesses are increasingly susceptible to Cyber attacks with ransom-ware. Additionally, computers and smartphones where you store data can also malfunction due to a plethora of reasons.
In such circumstances, it is best to backup your data and important files. You may also need to share files with your teammates or business associates and service providers. For this purpose, we highly recommend Google Drive.
All you need to log-in to Google Drive is a valid Gmail ID. Google Drive generally offers 2GB free space that can be expanded to 5GB later. Google Drive cloud storage allows you to safely share files including word documents, designs, images, audio and video, spreadsheets and other data with other authorized users.
Design and development
For those working in the IT sector, sharing codes for Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript with your team members, customers, reviewers, and experts is essential as well as desirable.
Mainly, because they can review your design and development, offer necessary feedback and help you amend the codes you have developed. This facility is essential, particularly for home-businesses and start-ups in the IT sector.
You can share your design and development codes safely through GitHub. Topmost software and app reviewers of the world term GitHub as the ‘Ultimate Tool’ for developers and code writers to host their designs and developments online. It is also the best-known tool for users to share information online with potential clients and remote workers.
Work From Home – Time-saving
Generally, people working from remote locations, owning a start-up, or a home-based business are not bound by conventional office hours. Meaning, they can work during the hours they find convenient.
Unfortunately, this freedom has its flip side too: You can end up wasting a lot of otherwise productive hours on fruitless pursuits.
RescueTime actually rescues you from wasting your time, money, and effort on unproductive ventures. RescueTime can be installed on your computer or Android-powered smartphone. Unfortunately, RescueTime is unavailable currently for iPhone.
This software helps you keep tabs on the amount of time you spend on each website or app. It also recommends how and where you have wasted time and areas where you could have better spent your time on a particular task.
This helps in optimal use of time online by helping you curb visits or hours spent on futile work. Hence, RescueTime helps in greatly enhancing your productivity.
Work From Home – Best work location
Freedom to work from remote locations or having your own business often tempts people to attend to other unrelated, personal tasks. This can be either in the place of your residence or some other distant location. Understandably, Internet connection and speed tends to vary at every place.
Tardy or unreliable Internet connectivity means you will be unable to complete a given task or respond to problems within a specified deadline. You, therefore, will need to operate from places that offer excellent, reliable and high-speed Internet connectivity.
You can easily find such locations with WorkFrom. User-friendly WorkFrom operates on your computer and mobile. It helps find the nearest and best location from where you can access WiFi networks that offer the best connectivity. This app is especially useful for people on the move or if you are on a holiday away from your hometown.
Feedback and suggestions
Require feedback and suggestions from your team, business associates or clients? Doodle ranks as the best software and app for this purpose. You can do a lot of stuff with Doodle.
One of them is posting your works on this web and smart-phone based platform for easy access by your target audience. Doodle alerts other connected and authorized users about your post. Once feedback and suggestions from concerned entities are posted, you also receive alerts.
This helps you make any corrections and amendments to your work. Further, Doodle enables you to receive vital feedback from customers of potential clients as well as their suggestions.
Online marketing
Every business, small and large, requires aggressive marketing of its products and services. Moreover, if you are working from a remote location or own a business, you will require excellent marketing software and app.
In this category, the clear winner is SAP Hybris Marketing Cloud. SAP Hybris offers you the full suite of customer engagement and multichannel e-commerce solutions. It helps you market products and services Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Customer (B2C).
Currently, a variety of small and large companies engaged in the financial sector, telecom, manufacture, and marketing are using SAP Hybris solutions. They rank as the best for online marketing since they are customer-centric.
Accounting
Obviously, working from home for a company or your own venture requires high-quality financial management. You can get several web-based software and mobile apps for accounting. One such popular software and app is Yodlee MoneyCenter.
Available for personal account keeping, Yodlee allows you to maintain a detailed list of all your transactions. It also gives you a user-friendly analysis of your expenses. Additionally, you are alerted about any withdrawals and high-value transactions that are recorded from your bank and credit card accounts.
With Yodlee MoneyCenter, you can also set up your own budgets by stipulating a fixed sum for any particular expense such as food, utilities, telephone, travel, and entertainment. Hence, you are warned about where you can cut costs.
To use Yodlee MoneyCenter, you need to link the software or app with your main bank and credit card accounts. This helps access your financial data. However, you need to maintain very high-level password protection and ensure your mobile handset containing the app is not lost, for additional security.
Work from Home Online Apps For interviews, Meetings, and Tests
Working at remote locations or from home often entails interviewing job seekers or conducting online tests to determine their eligibility. In this category, the time-tested and proven software and app remains Skype.
Through Skype, you can conduct an online, video interview with a job seeker. Video interviews through Skype can also be conducted simultaneously by several interviewers located in different parts of the world. This facility helps interviewers gauge the body language of the job seeker.
Now comes the Zoom App. an easy to use app which can accommodate 100 members with its free version. Within a short span of time it has risen in popularity because of its versatility and other features. The free version of this app allows 100 people for a group meeting of 40mins and have unlimited meetings.
It is estimated that there is a 99% chance of people working from home during these COVID- 19 Pandemic periods uses Zoom as one of their best App for meeting and conversing people face to face through Zoom.
One can easily operate this App by downloading it from the play store or directly from their site ZOOM
Here is a video that speaks about the basic features of the Zoom Application. How to download and start a zoom meeting and various other steps well narrated in this video.
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A Podcast Interview by Foundr CEO Nathan Chan With Steve Blank , (A Serial Entrepreneur, Author, And Educator
Additionally, you can administer eligibility tests through Skype by sending test material such as Microsoft Word document, pictures, and video or other data. Skype also allows you to monitor the time taken by a candidate to complete the test.
In conclusion
We are all well aware of the stiff competition that prevails between software and app makers worldwide. Understandable, since everyone wants to excel in their specific sphere. Before you select any software or app, we recommend you to read user reviews on some of the top and reliable websites operating in this sector: You may come across a tool or app that better suits your requirements than the ones we list.
YET ANOTHER RELATED POST TO READ
How to Convince Your Boss to Let You WFH For Good
Banish the daily grind, stressful commute, and arguments over air-con. Read this article to discover the real benefits of remote working that your boss won’t be able to say no to.
Work from Home: Tools, Tips, + Methods A Video To Watch
Remember, some apps and tools are free while others are available at a price. Try some of the software and apps that are available for a free trial for a week, fortnight, or a month. Understandably, they may lack some features of the paid versions. However, they will give you a better understanding of how they operate and ease of use, among others.
Usage Of Smartphones And Radiation
Since working from home invariably involves finances, it is better to protect your device- computer or smartphone with proper anti-virus and anti-spyware/ hacking software. Unprotected computers can cause leaks of sensitive data related to your work or result in financial losses.
A Serious Caution Brought Along with this post on the use of Smartphones, iPads etc.
“The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation” — Dr. Devra Davis
What we know, what we need to find out, and what you can do now” The video is a Presentation of Dr. Devra Davis, Visiting Professor of Medicine at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School, and Visiting Professor of Medicine at Ondokuz Mayis University, Turkey.
A Must Watch Video To All (Young And Old)
Video Courtesy: The University of Melbourne
Published on: Nov 28, 2017, at 15:03
Updated on: Apr 8, 2020, at 02:03
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Hi, Thanks a lot of sharing this awesome info. I really like your post. I love to share on social media. Keep it up! Those is my first visit to unit site.
This is pretty good and useful i will try this to use this in my daily work. Great list of tools. Thanks fort sharing. Have a great time at this lockdown period.
Take Care ❤️
This a great article that I’ll keep coming back more and more to learn from. It seems that we need to work from home for a long time since there’s no guarantee that the current situation will change soon! Let’s look for a better tomorrow. Stay at home and be safe. Take care.
Hi Philip,
This post is right for our time. A good opportunity now to learn the skills needed for working from home. It will be for many people the best work to do in the future.
You give valuable advice here which will help a lot.
Thank you
Erika
This post is a very timely one. Indeed a very informative and useful piece for those who are planning to work from home. As mentioned the unexpected outbreak of Coronavirus forced many to sit at home and at those juncture this post is a very helpfull one
Thanks for sharing.
Devi K. Pillai
Good knowledge you shared, indeed a timely one. A good number of tips one can pick from this informative post. Thanks for sharing. Keep sharing.
This is my first visit to your site. I am so glad to note that there are a number of guides and tutorials for all. Keep up the good work.
Regards
Sulaxna
Nice work Philip, Thanks for sharing the information. This is really a great post and a timely one as many of our fellow beings are in search of new jobs after the effect of the corona epidemic.
This post and the information will be a great help to many of your readers.
I will share it with my fellow friends on social media.
Keep writing. Keep it up,
A very timely post. As many are in need of a job, this post will give some guidance.
Indeed a lot of things to look into and adopt. I appreciate you for sharing it with your readers.
Yes the home invariably involves finances, it is better to protect your device- computer or smartphone with the proper anti-virus
You have written an amazing article which is very helpful for me. You have done proper research and you have taken all the points in your article. I have cleared my all questions. Thanks for your article.
Nice article it helping me so much thnks for giving great full knowledge
The article is very good, you can refer to some forms on my site and it also has preferential courses
Great and Helpful information. We need this type of information, so thanks for sharing this helpful information with us.
Philip, thanks for the update on working remotely. Here in New Zealand a lot of government and local authority employees have been set up with tools and access to work remotely. It was existent before, but has accelerated since March of 2020. I need to look into Github deeper, as the way you’ve described it, we could benefit enormously by implementing it, too. Thanks, GD. Waikato, NZ.
Amazing source of knowledge.Thanks, Phillip. It’s awesome to know and I’ll be using some of these for myself.
Thanks philip for recommended tool you gave. I always use Zoom for meeting with my companies, its easy than other tool you can download it.
A very user-friendly one. Orthat tools too looks great. We’ll check it out.
Jaber a great time of sharing ahead.
Great post ! In a way, the current scenario as you yourself mentioned it represents a positive asset for online or remote jobs and bussiness to expand and take the lead over local jobs and workplaces.
Personally, I prefer working home than some other locations as I got an ADSL internet connexion :).
I think everyone was thrown in the deep end when it came to working at home, but I think employers are now seeing that it’s a viable option. These are some great tips, thanks!