In a very short time working from home became a reality for many businesses. How do we remain organized and make sure no-one is missing important info?
Good news; with the right tools and software, working from home can be a great benefit for everyone.
At Kipawa+ we gathered a selection of the best tools for you, divided into the following critical areas:
- Real-Time Communication
- Best Project Management Tools
- Team Meetings And Conferences Tools
- Knowledge Base
- Remote Teams Management and Onboarding
- Collaboration Documents
1. Real-Time Communication
Slack is a messaging and collaboration tool. The application brings all your team’s communications and files at the same place, where they are instantly searchable. We like Slack especially for internal communications and we use it as a substitute for walking to someone’s desk.
Pricing: Free, Standard and Plus. Standard – 6,67$/per/month and Premium 12,50$/per/month. More info.
Twist is used for internal communication and is Slack’s main competitor. It allows teams to organize and classify their conversation’s flow differently. We like the different channels and threads on Twist, which allow to not be disturbed by every single message but follow our main topics.
Pricing: Free for one month, up to 5 integration. Unlimited: 5$/ month/user. More info.
2. Project Management Tools
https://asana.com/uses/project-management
Asana is a project management tool that helps to manage the team’s workflow, project and tasks online. Asana is a great visual tool to follow timeline, portfolios and process. We like Asana for the user-friendly interface and intuitive features.
Pricing: Free for basic. Premium: 10,99$/user/month. Business 24,99$/user/month. More info.
Trello is a project management tool offering boards, lists and cards to enable teams to organize and prioritize their projects in a flexible way. The board makes it very easy to navigate between different projects, reorganizing items and offers the possibility to create a call to action by synchronizing a card with member’s calendars.
Pricing: Free trial for basics. Business: 9,99$/user/month. Enterprise: 20,83$/month. More info.
Notion is a team collaboration tool bringing everyday work app at one place. Projects & tasks, notes & docs, knowledgebase, databases. Notion is centralizing all the information and facilitates team’s interactions by knowing exactly who is working on what.
Pricing: Free for basics. Personal Account: 4$/month. Team: 8$/user/month. More info.
Miro is an online collaborative whiteboarding platform which makes it easier to create and adapt the team’s strategies, cross-functional teamwork, customer journey map, etc. We like the templates on Miro, very visual.
Pricing: Free for basics. Team: 8$/user/month. Business: 16$/user/month. More info.
Basecamp is a project management tool to synchronize remote team’s work. Useful to organize the To-Do, keep everything at the same place (documents, schedule, messages), follow the team’s workflow. Basecamp is providing a platform for collaboration and for communication.
Pricing: Free 30 days trial. Business: 99$/month. More info.
RemoteHQ is a collaboration platform for remote teams. The platform creates virtual workplace and connects with the different applications (Trello, Google Drive, etc) to make teams collaboration easier and facilitate meetings organizations, screens sharing, tasks distribution. We recommend RemoteHQ to organize the team’s tasks and client demos.
Pricing: Free for 5 participants and 1 room. Pro option: 9,99$/month. More info.
Proof-hub is an all-in-one project management and team collaboration software that helps teams stay in ultimate control of their tasks, projects, and communication. Task management, workflows and boards, real-time discussions and communications, online proofing, group chat time tracking, reporting – ProofHub gives you everything you require to work productively no matter where you are. Its easy-to-use interface makes onboarding for teams effortless. One of the best things about ProofHub is its simple, no per-user pricing that makes it a highly cost-effective option.
Pricing: Essential package is $45 per month billed annually. Click here for more info on pricing.
Cross Product Integration
Zapier is a cross-product integration between all the apps; Gmail, Dropbox, Slack in order to route the information and build a workflow. -Ex: receiving an email with a key word will send a Slack notification and generate a google calendar reminder. Zapier is the easiest way to automate different tasks, especially useful for the Sales and Marketing department.
Pricing: Free forever until 100 tasks/month. Starter: 19,99$/month. Professional: 49$/month. More info.
4. Video creation
Loom is a unique software to easily create videos ready to be shared. Remote teams can record work process for remote cross-department training or bring on a new staff showing them the main processes. The explainer videos can also introduce a project or demo to a client.
Pricing: Free for the individual that just need to record & share quick videos. Pro: from 4$/month. More info.
Time Tracking
Time Tracking
Harvest is a time tracking tool, ideal for independent remote workers. The app tracks where you spent most of the time; projects/ meetings? On which tools? Asana, Trello, Basecamp etc? This facilitates billing clients based on the time spent. Harvest can also be used for remote teams to know where everyone spent most their time and possibly reorganize tasks repartition.
Pricing: 12$/month for 1 user, 48$/month for 4 people. More info.
3. Team Meetings and Conferences Tools
These tools are critical if you need to organize a team meeting where you want to see the other participants and share your screen.
Zoom is a video-conferencing software that allows you to share your screen, set-up video calls and add as many participants as needed. We use Zoom for most of our internal and external meetings. The only limitation is that Zoom doesn’t allow all participants to collaborate on the shared screen.
Pricing Free option -limited to 40 minutes video. Pro: 14,99$/month/host. Business: 19,99$/month/host. More info.
Whereby is a video conferencing tool. The big advantage, all meetings are conducted from your browser -Guests don’t need to downloads or logins to join the call. The participants can share their screen and record the meeting. We recommend Whereby for very small businesses (free version accepts until 4 participants, unlimited time) and medium businesses (pro option).
Pricing: Free for 4 participants, Pro: 9,99$/month. Business: 59,99$/month. More info.
https://www.gotomeeting.com/en-gb
GoToMeeting is a communications software for messages, video-conference and business webinars. GoToMeeting can be used for daily basis communications: teams messaging, calls, video conferencing with screen sharing.
Pricing: Free up to 3 participants and for 40 minutes meeting, Professional: 9,50$/month. More info.
4. Knowledge Base
Getguru is a knowledge management solution working with different apps, Gmail, slack, salesforce: especially useful for the Sales and Support team to resolve regularly asked questions and deliver the right information.
Pricing: Free up to 10 users. Builder plan:14$/user/month. More info.
https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/knowledge-base
Confluence is a knowledge base software to keep content organized, accessible and easy to manage for internal teams and external consumers. Confluence can help to address quickly employee’s needs. We like the customizable platform.
Pricing: 10$/month up to 10 users. Above 10 users: 5$/user/month. More info.
5. Remote Team Management And Onboarding
Know your Team is a social connection tool. Know Your Team is dedicated to remote team’s management – very insightful at the moment to maintain a strong link within the team’s members working from home. With Know Your Team, managers know who is working on what, get easily team’s feedback and can organize one-to-one meetings.
Pricing: 30$/month/manager for unlimited employees. More info.
https://www.lessonly.com/ld-solutions/
Lessonly is a training software for employees. Lesonly facilitates remote employees’ onboarding by supporting their training, as well as developing current employees’ career by learning new skillsets.
Pricing: Lessonly invites potential clients to contact them for the pricing details. More info.
Blink is an employee engagement software that’s designed to enhance communication between remote frontline workers and in-house teams, ensuring that all your staff is on the same page. It helps increase employee productivity via a unified platform that offers personalized news feed, discussion threads, employee directory, and so much more. The app keeps all the remote workers in the loop with each other by connecting them with their co-workers and managers through mobile devices. The best thing about Blink is that it’s also a complete solution for digitizing the organization’s paper-based processes to keep them safe and secure.
Pricing: Start with a free trial for 14 days. The business plan is $3.40 per person per month, and the Enterprise plan is priced according to an organization’s customization requirements. More info here.
6. Collaboration Documents
Paper by Dropbox is a document collaboration tool that allows the team’s members to comment and ask questions on the same document simultaneously. Especially useful when the teams are not working in the same space.
Pricing: Free
Smartsheets is a project management tool on which all team’s members can collaborate simultaneously. Smartsheets offers templates and dashboards to classify and organize workflow in remote working teams. Every member can assign tasks, track the achievements, create alerts and manage resources at one place.
Pricing: Individual: 14$/month. Business: 25$/user/month. More info.
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