In the agile business series we spoke about where our places of work. With technology keeping us connected, it can be argued – we can “work” wherever we happen to be.
I answer calls when I am in the car thanks to blue tooth connectivity, and of course the same is true when I am between meetings, taking my lunch time walk or pretty much any time a client needs to talk to me. The only time I don’t take a call is if I am currently with a client or otherwise engaged – but the answering service will take care of those messages until I can return the calls.
The same is also true for Social Media.
Commuters the world over can be seen head down, ear phones in scrolling through their preferred social media feeds with almost no regard to the people around them. Remember the Pokemon craze where non-players were shaking their heads at others being pulled out of canals, rivers and dangerous situations because they were playing the game? Of course it’s funny until someone gets hurt.
But you get my point I am sure – with technology we can work anywhere at any time. And there are many tools and applications we can utilise to make our working lives easier – these are a few of those we use which you may find useful:
Keeper – Password storage solution. Keeps everything safe and you can sync the desktop app to the phone and the only password you HAVE to remember is the one to get you into the Keeper program.
Mobile Phone – Synchronize your emails and calendar, ensure you put in separate diary entries for travel so you can utilise the GPS capabilities of the phone. Of course it also helps to have an in-car charger and a battery backup and cables just in case you run out of juice during the day – and some apps are more juice hungry than others and Maps is a good example as I found out on Wednesday after another day on the road and having absolutely no sense of direction.
Applications:
There are also several applications I use on a regular basis
- ATO – Because I now spend a lot of time on the road I need to keep track of mileage and expenditure. If you do this as part of your days activities you are well on the way to organising your tax return at the end of the year, once the file is backed up and sent to the taxation office / accountant.
- Cam Card – Business Cards can be a bit of a nuisance, but with Cam Card you can scan them into your phone, once you have done that the contacts get backed up to your email contacts.
- Cam Scan – Need a document scanner on the go? Now you have one.
- Beep n Go – This stores all your rewards cards into the one application – which means you can empty your wallet of the wretched things. If you are a member of Rewardle – they’ve just launched something similar.
- Pad and paper! – I know it’s old school – but sometimes you need to make notes after phone calls, or need to give yourself reminders, a simple note pad and pen can work wonders.
Of course if you prefer not to work while you are on the road, or if you would prefer someone else to take the messages for you – we do offer virtual answering services and calendar management. We take all your bookings and ensure your diary has all the necessary information to keep you on the road helping your clients – which we think is really the point isn’t it.