It is the goal of any business to produce the maximum output from any given input. Productivity is the ratio of outputs produced to inputs during production. In this Information Age, knowledge workers are mainly responsible for the outputs of companies and enterprises. To improve the productivity of individuals and teams, organizations promote the use of productivity software for their knowledge workforce. The use of these modern tools help individuals spend less time in completing work, so they are able to do more to improve the quality of their work. Collectively, teams are able to communicate more effectively and collaborate well to produce the best work expected of them.
What is productivity software?
Productivity software was originally defined as any application software that is used in producing information. Office suites that include word processors, spreadsheets, slide presentations, and database software were the first productivity tools for providing alternatives to typewriters, columnar notebooks, Rolodexes, and other non-digital work tools. The scope of productivity software expanded to include time management software and project management software for tracking project tasks, resources, schedules, workload, and progress. As businesses continue to transform digitally, the meaning of productivity also continues to expand beyond time saving and effective team collaboration.
Common productivity software features
Project management enables teams to create goals, define tasks to achieve the identified goals, add schedules and resources, track progress, and facilitate communication for the whole project life cycle. Some of the best productivity software are project management tools with expanded features for other business processes.
Time management allows workers to track the time they spend working. It provides a record complete with details and categories for each block of time spent on a particular activity or task. Users can view records, review their timesheet, and plan for further optimization.
Communication is vital, especially in today’s distributed and remote work environment. Many productivity tools include chat, email integration, and group communication tools to support team collaboration.
Best productivity software and tools
Here are some of the best productivity tools available today for businesses and teams of all sizes regardless of industry. We looked at the latest reviews from several media sites, customer feedback, features, releases, support, and market ranking to determine the standings.
Trello
Trello is a free online productivity software that lets teams manage projects in a collaborative way. It uses a system of visual boards, lists, and cards that lets you customize your workflow. Drag and drop cards from one list to the next, move cards up or down to prioritize work, post comments, send @mentions, and attach files for collaboration.
Asana
Asana is a work management software for teams to easily manage their projects and tasks online. It is a simple yet powerful software with productivity tools used by project teams, marketing teams, sales, operations, and product development teams, among others. The software allows businesses to create task lists, centralize documents and files, offers templates for quick setup, and provides a secured platform for sharing information.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet is a work execution software that helps teams increase effectiveness and achieve more through its features. It has collaboration tools that minimizes email exchanges, real-time reporting that provides the latest information, and automated workflows that reduce manual tasks.
Basecamp
Basecamp is a pioneer among online productivity tools that lets users manage projects and team communications. It is an easy-to-use software with to-do lists, schedules, and several communication tools. It promotes organization of tasks, documents, and conversations, whether with team members, clients, or other partners.
Airtable
Airtable is a highly customizable software with the features of a database and the interface of a spreadsheet. It provides users different views of their data, fields for tracking different types of information, links from one set of data to another, and integration to many popular apps.
TMetric
TMetric is a free and user-friendly time tracking app that provides accurate time tracking, a diverse options of tasks and project scope management, real-time reports for an in-depth analysis, team’s payrolling, billing and invoicing. Their Time Off module enables employees to ask for days off, control missed workdays, and manage balances and team attendance hassle-free. TMetric integrates with 50+ services, which lets you measure progress and activity in any tools you use.
monday.com
monday.com is a team software that includes project management and time tracking features. It is highly visual and customizable with automation tools and integration to many apps and web services.
Podio
Podio is a customizable software that lets users choose the productivity tools they need for their business. They can choose from different app items that represent records and how information is displayed. Different project management views, task management, file sharing, and online conversations are some of the features that help teams work in sync.
Wrike
Wrike is a versatile project management and collaboration software for companies in a variety of industries. It has task management, resource management, time tracking, reporting, and portfolio management. A single system can be utilized by all stakeholders, from the project team members, to the project management office.
Clockify
Clockify is a free time tracking tool for teams. It has an automatic stopwatch timer where users can track their and their team’s time spent on client work or internal projects. It also has a timesheet, notes, templates, and dashboards and other time management features. It works across devices and integrates with other apps.
Toggl
Toggl is a simple time tracking software with reporting tools. It allows for automated time tracking, manual entry, and calendar integration. The productivity software also allows for exporting of time reports in various formats, team dashboards, and scheduled alerts.
Productivity software can be any software and tools that make a person productive, and that depends on what they do. These solutions now go beyond creating information on documents and sharing them, but also enable people to complete valuable work on time that is part of a greater team effort.
