How to be more effective and efficient at work?

If you are in a department that requires you to work in a team, doing every single thing manually can lead to a lot of misalignment, miscommunication, and wasted time that could have been spent on more important tasks.

At Krowme, we are advocates of streamlining your processes as much as possible so that you and your team(s) can focus on achieving goals (whether if the goal is to hit a higher ROI or even if the goal is to just leave work on time without work getting overly piled up).

The great thing about today’s digital landscape is that there are plenty of tools that can help us make our work process much more effective and efficient.

We have identified 5 main task categories that we all are exposed to at work on a day-to-day basis, where your team’s tasks can be streamlined much more efficiently. The 5 categories are: Project Management, Team Engagement, Documentation, Video Conferencing, Resource Management, Quality Assurance.

In this article, we will cover the digital tools that are catered for the following 5 task categories – Project Management, Team Engagement, Documentation, Video Conferencing, Resource Management, Quality Assurance, to help you and your team be more effective and efficient at work.

1. Project Management

Project Management refers to the day-to-day management and operations of your team’s project(s). Assignment of tasks, timelines, ensuring that tasks run as smoothly as possible. It is not the most sexy job scope but everyone in your team will be very thankful when you take measures to ensure that the project(s) run smoothly.

In this digital age, our projects can get quite complex and just relying on emailing along simply does not cut it. There are plenty of project management platforms out there – the most popular ones are Trello, Asana, monday.com and Teamwork.

1a. Trello – Project Management App

Trello is a project management app that allows users to organize tasks into boards. Boards can contain lists of items, projects, or anything else that needs to be done. Users can add new cards to each board and assign them to other people.

1b. Asana – Team Communication & Task Tracking

Asana is an online task management system that helps teams collaborate on projects by allowing them to share ideas, track progress, and communicate with one another. It also provides a calendar view so team members can see what everyone has going on. You can even use Asana to conduct full fledged user testing on your applications, software or any other web projects.

1c. Teamwork – Project Management Platform

Teamwork is a project management app where you can send tasks out to your team. Teamwork is great If you have multiple projects and want to have a higher level of focus on each project. Another interesting part about Teams is that you can also include your clients in the platforms, which help make your interactions more seamless.

2. Team Engagement

Team engagement refers to the methods used to make your team feel more engaged. Successful engagement is rooted in your teammates’ level of investment in the project.

The key is to make the work experience fun for all the various personalities in your team. Good team Engagement increases task performance, the level of work efficiency and project team members’ attitudes towards their work.

There are plenty of engagement tools on the web that can help make the work process less dry.

Some of our favorite applications for team engagement are as follows:

2a. Google Drive

Google’s workplace tools like Google docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets allow users to update in real time! This means that you can see what your colleague (who may be at the other side of the world) is updating LIVE.

Not only is it fun to update the same document at the same time, it also helps reduce the amount of multiple duplicates of the same file (which used to be an issue back in the day when workplace tools were limited to only Microsoft Office’s products. This is because when everyone in the project has access to the same document, the chances of doing double work is greatly reduced.

2b. Slack

Slack is an online team collaboration platform that lets teams communicate with each other through channels and direct messaging. It also includes file sharing, document editing, and task management.

If your team needs a text-based communication tool that integrates with your other work systems and supports file sharing, Slack is a good option to consider.

2c. Miro

Miro is also another software that can be updated in real time. You can use Miro to create multiple wireframes, flow charts, give comments via sticky notes and more. The user experience as you zoom in and out to view the various mockups or pages on Miro is also quite fluid and seamless.

2d. Discord

Discord is a popular platform that is used by many workspaces and NFT communities. Discord allows for the creation of multiple groups where only the group’s chats will be shown when you click into the group. If you need good voice and video calling features, Discord is a good option to consider.

3. Documentation

It is vital to document everything down. However, various issues can arise if you are still documenting things the manual way (ie, always creating reports from scratch, saving multiple versions of the same file until you do not know which is the latest file). Thankfully, technology has enabled us to be smarter with our documentation.

Here are a few documentation tools that you may enjoy.

3a. Google Drive

In addition to being able to edit and update in real time, you can see all the past edits that have been made to the document. This is tremendously useful when you need to track back to see what you did previously or if you need to revert back to an old version.

3b. Krowme’s Query Reports

The Krowme Platform offers a function called ‘Query Reports, which allows for the flexibility to choose what you want to display in your Payroll, Leave, Claims, Appraisal, Time and Attendance reports. This query reports function has definitely helped our customers save ALOT of time and it is one of the top features that they enjoy using.

3c. Docusign

There are certain documents that are more confidential or require sign offs eg NDA forms, Employee Contracts and so on.

Good news is that there are plenty of tools like Docusign out there to help password-secure your confidential documents, and also tools out there that allow you to sign documents digitally.

The great thing about being able to sign your documents digitally is that that you do not have go through the tedious process of printing the document, doodling your signature, and then scanning the signed document (only to get it rejected and having to repeat the whole process again).

4. Video Conferencing

In our post-pandemic day and age, the rise and popularity of video conferencing platforms now give us the option to choose between meeting face-to-face or having our meetings online. Many of us now very much prefer the ultra-convenience of having our meetings over video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Google Meets or Teams.

As much as I think that face-to-face meetings are still the best way to improve rapport, I certainly do not miss the long travelling time to travel to a client’s place for meetings.

Here are some popular video conferencing tools that you can consider using.

4a. Zoom – Video Conferencing

Zoom is a free app that allows users to connect via video chat. You can use it to make calls, send messages, and even host meetings. The pandemic that started in the year 2020 shot up Zoom’s popularity because it was mandatory for most of us to work from home.

Ever since then, working from home has become the new normal. Nowadays, most companies rely on Zoom (or any other preferred video conferencing software) for all their video conferencing needs.

4b. Teams

Teams is another great platform for video conferencing. The unique aspect about Teams is its background settings. Instead of just showing 1 person on the screen,

Teams has a function that shows everyone in the meeting in any setting of your choice (in a boardroom, on the beach, under the sea in a submarine). At Krowme, we have used Teams a number of times and we really enjoy using this function as it really has helped lighten the mood of the video conference session.

4c. Google Meets

If your organization uses google and you do not want to pay for (yet) another software, you can consider using Google Meets, which is free! The main downside about Google Meets is that the sound quality is not as good as Zooms or Teams.

5. Resource Management

Resource management refers to the management of the human resources that you have, which can include your employees, freelancers, part-timers and so on.

Having an overview of all your resources can give you insight of who is overloaded, who has some extra bandwidth, who is usually the first to get assigned tasks.

Here are some great resource management tools that I have used.

5a. Float

Float is a life saver because it is such a simple yet effective concept when it comes to resource management. With Float, you can see who is handling too much work and who is handling too little work.

At a glance, you can see all the tasks that each team member does in a day. Float allows you to ensure that everyone in your team is as productive as possible, without overloading anyone.

6. Quality Assurance

You want to ensure that your employees uphold your company’s morals and values and produce good quality work, to establish your company as one that is the industry standard, that is able to provide that the customer is looking for.

This means that you need to ensure that all your company’s output (branding, support, sales, user experience) is of the quality that you want to portray your company as.

Here are some suggestions to help you improve your company’s quality assurance

Have a good Brand Guide so that all your marketing collaterals are aligned with the brand
Good organizational practises – Check out 10 ways you can improve company operations with accessible online tools
Good documentation
Great user experience
Awesome customer service – Find out how you can utilise Telegram to improve your customer service