Amid uncertainty around the coronavirus outbreak, a number of business houses are resorting to options like remote working in India. While these necessary precautions have become a need of the hour, maintaining productivity is another concern. To the rescue, technology can play a pivotal role in exponentiating the output and one such way is to switch to tools for remote working. There are a number of remote working tools available online. These applications help you cope with the infrastructural challenges of working from home. From connectivity issues to sharing data and tracking operations, there’s an answer to all your remote working concerns. Related: Working from home during COVID-19 lockdown? Here’re 10 productivity tips.
Here are the best tools for remote workers to stay productive and organised while remote working in India:
(A) Communications
Communications play a multilateral role in boosting productivity. A well-communicated effort at anything is far more efficient and proactively fruitful. While working remotely in India, communicating with the units of a team can be a challenge. These communication tools can help you cover great lengths in this direction.
1) Slack
Enabling end to end communications, transfer of data and other business ideations across individuals or within teams, Slack has become a sought after communication tool nowadays. Standing apart as a perfect tool for remote working in India, the online communication tool comes with add-ons to customize this application as per your requirements. Licence Price: Approx 60 USD/year Free Download Link: For Android –Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings: AppStore – 4.2/5, Google PlayS tore – 4.4/5
2) Dropbox
A cloud sharing application, Dropbox has surfaced as one of the most trusted names in data sharing and storage. A free basic version comes with a 2GB storage for all users and allows them to earn more storage once you use it. The best part about Dropbox is that it allows you to preview and store more than 175 types of files under the same UI. A must-have remote working tool if you’re working from home, even the basic edition of Dropbox is popular enough among budding startups and entrepreneurs. Licence Price:9.99 USD/month Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings:App Store – 4.6/5, Google Play Store – 4.3/5
3) Evernote
Connoted as the one for more professional usage, Evernote helps you categorize, sort, export and channelize your data into funnels and buckets. Its free version allows usage of 60MB per month, however, the office version is highly comprehensive on usage and add-on benefits. While dealing with complex data-sets at remote working locations, such a tool definitely adds to your productivity. Licence Price: 7.99 USD/month Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings: App Store – 4.6/5, Google Play Store – 4.2/5
4) Skype
And this one does not confine to the need for an introduction. Most of us have come across this name at least once in our life. Undeniably, this is one of the most common communication tools in the world. Nowadays, when social distancing is inevitable to contain the spread of COVID 19, Skype is a prefered option to conduct meetings, teleconferences and video conferences. Free to use a tool, Skype can be used in a number of ways to monitor and induce growth in productivity. Licence Price:Starting from 2.95USD Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings: App Store – 4.5/5, Google Play Store – 4.3/5
5) Xtensio
Xtensiois one of the most powerful and amazing collaboration tools that let your teams work easily. Using them, you can create, manage and share files and presentations. And that’s not all! Xtensio also helps you create impressive landing pages, presentations, sheets, and more. Pricing: Starts at $50 per month with 2 user access 
(B) Productivity
Enhancing productivity comes at a cost of efforts & zeal, not capital and investment. And these determinants prove challenging for the employees that are working remotely from India. Due to the paranoia of Coronavirus spreading like wildfire out there, it has become a grave task in monitoring the morale and enthusiasm of employees. To the need, these remote working tools graph, allocate and monitor growth and productivity with ease and convenience for the management.
1) Asana
A workforce management tool, Asana comes with a number of benefits that loop in enhanced productivity. From assigning tasks to sending out reminders and other notifications, it helps maintain track of progress and challenges of remote working. With free features that work just as fine for managing a nuclear team, the premium or paid version adds to the finesse of your work culture. With which, you get a better grip at monitoring growth, maintaining the security of your data and other essentials of workforce management. Licence Price: 10.99USD per user/month Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings:App Store – 4.7/5, Google Play Store – 4.6/5
2) Toggl
Adding to the efficiency of any employee, Toggl maintains a graph of time spent on a specific project. An important part of boosting output while remote working due to COVID 19 outbreak in India, time management can add substantially to your remote working productivity. It allows you to set tracking reminders, share these tracking details and improvises suggestion to work on your productivity. Which when worked upon, have proved to show improvement. Licence Price: 09 USD/month/per user Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings: App Store – 4.8/5, Play Store – 4.7/5
3) Trello
Organizing a project has never been as easy as it is with Trello. Working model of an online corkboard, Trello helps you sort and aggregate steps among your team members and individuals. With features like in-line editing, labelling and tracking the work, Trello is one of the best tools for project management for micro and macro levelled projects while working remotely in India. Licence Price: 9.99 USD/month/per user Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings:App Store – 4.6/5, Google Play Store – 4.5/5
4) Loom
A free to use online screen recording tool, Loom helps reduce the need to reiterate minutes of any project. Its advanced features allow users to share this, embed it in Vlogs, or generate copies for future reference. Its uses cannot be contained to any single vertical, but it can be calibrated to a business’s needs. Graphing, recording and mapping the progress of a session on a project via screen recording, it has gained momentum in amplifying productivity among remote workers in India. Licence Price: 10 USD/month
5) Hubstaff
Hubstaff isa time tracking solution with productivity monitoring, online timesheets, invoicing, and more.Thousands of remote teams, business owners, and freelancers use it every day to be more efficient. With some premium additional features like Geofencing, GPS tracking, Shift planning and Project budgeting, Hubstaff has become even more popular in the new normal. License Price: The basic version starts at $7 per user per month
6) ProofHub
An excellent project management and team collaboration software, ProofHub lets teams stay in ultimate control of their tasks, projects, and communications.
From setting tasks with deadlines to assigning them to team members, ProofHub helps to simplify your task management efforts. It allows you to seamlessly collaborate with your remote team members with an in-built chat feature and a dedicated space for real-time collaboration.
You can also review, proof, and annotate design files using markup tools, share feedback in comments to review and approve files all from one single place.
License Price: Ultimate control plan with unlimited users at $89 per month
Free Download Link: For Android Click Here, For Apple Devices Click Here
AppStore & Play Store Ratings: App Store 4.6/5, Google Play Store 4.5/5
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(C) Sales & Marketing
Salesforce and marketing elements primarily drive the revenue model of any business plan. But when the entire workforce turns to remote working in India, keeping a track of these things becomes necessary. Amidspeculations about COVID19 to be a long-lasting thing, one must look up to convenient ways to attain this. And these remote working tools for sales & marketing operations just work wonders for the need.
1) ZOHO CRM
Customer Relationship Management is simply the spine of any sales operation. Withstanding support for these projects are the CRM tools available online. While sorting through the best one for your business can be a tough nut to crack, choosing one with all the major utilities is a plausible solution. Behold, the ZOHO CRM. With its integrable user interface, you can manage, schedule and pre-position your sales interactions at any given time. Automating the sales force to quite some extent, the ZOHO interface deals with a number of directives for you. From lead management to keeping a tab on the entire sales project, it offers an end to end approach to your sales operations. Zoho also has a suite of tools called Remotely that can help remote workers to a great extent. They are offering free access to this tool until July 01 2020, amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis. Licence Price:From 8 USD – 12 USD/ month Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings:App Store – 4/5, Google Play Store – 4.2/5
2) Agora Pulse
One of the best remote social media marketing tools in India, Agorapulse makes your social interactions worthy and your life easier as a marketer. While most of the social media management tools fail to differentiate content over various channels, Agorapulse allows you to customize and channelize the marketing efforts as per specific platform’s needs. Making you look good everywhere, with very little efforts being put into it. Along with a number of such time saving, efficiency inducing options to choose from, this one’s a winner among its class. Licence Price:From 99USD/month – 499USD/month Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings: App Store – 3.3/5, Google Play Store – 2.8/5
3) Zoom
A video conferencing tool, that helps sales individuals convert leads even on a remote working schedule is nothing but a blessing from above. Zoom is a platform with multi-dimensional uses. With options to schedule and conduct video conferences with prospective clients, team members or customers, the sales force can optimise it to suit the needs at hand. One of the few tools that offer lifetime free usage, its paid features come in handy once you start using it. Licence Price:14.99 USD/month Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings:App Store – 4.6/5, Google Play Store – 2.4/5
4) Ahrefs
And the star of marketing tools could not be kept out of this list of best remote working tools. When on a remote working schedule, the link building activity can take a serious hit. The solution? Working with one of the largest link building indexes ever. Ahrefs, that can be used to work upon a number of marketing needs, is also one of the most suitable tools for link building. It allows you to track, manage and diversify your link community from the same platform. Helping marketers steer their strategy even while working remotely from anywhere in India. Licence Price: From 99USD/month – 999USD/month [optin-cat id=7239]
(D) Designing & Content
Designing and content curation has shown a rapid surge in the previous few years. With the advent in online laterals of businesses all across the globe, the need to refurbish the communication channels and marketing efforts as per the need is necessary. In the recent turn of events, it has become a daunting task to manage these things remotely. Working on it or managing these projects, it’s tough to carve out targetted productivity while remote working in India. Well, not anymore! Using these remote working tools for Designing & Content, one can make sure of meeting the expectations at hand.
1) Canva
One of the most common designing tools, Canva supports various types of design requirements for those working remotely. Even with limitations on the free version, Canva has a number of templates and free structured designs to carve your business’s design niche. With a host of features added in its paid version, even an amateur designer can come up with infographics, headers and creatives while working remotely from anywhere in India. Licence Price:12.95 USD/month/per user Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings:App Store – 4.9/5, Google Play Store – 4.7/5
2) Visme
A preferred tool for visual content designing and creation, Visme is definitely a professional choice for this domain. It supports team collaboration and distribution of dynamic ideas, by allowing individual contributors to edit, propose changes and work simultaneously on an ongoing project. In the wake of COVID19 outbreak, when a number of professionals are working from home and need direly need remote working tools, they have rolled out promotional pricing offers for business plans as well. Licence Price:12USD/month/user
3) Joomla
Joomla is one of the leading content management systems available in the market. Touted to be the second most used CMS after WordPress, Joomla allows a number of things under a single interface. Ranging from Website creation to posting content pieces on the website, users can access its wide range of options to matriculate and post various kinds of contents on any domain. Licence Price: Open Source – Free
4) Pic Monkey
A convenient yet highly operational photo editing and touch-up tool, Pic Monkey is user friendly and work-oriented, both at the same once. Allowing active comparison with before/after options, unified layers of effects and many other options for your design team, the Pic Monkey is all things inclusive an application. Re-purpose it for your remote working designers or just get it for fun, you won’t leave disappointed. Licence Price: 72 USD/ year Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here, For Apple Devices – Click Here AppStore & Play Store Ratings:App Store – 4.8/5, Google Play Store – 3.6/5 Articles you may like:
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(E) Human Resources
Human resources is equally a part of any organization’s development and growth. While in the pertaining scenarios with social distancing in the picture, managing and resourcing employees have become tougher than ever. Working remotely, HR personnel are either restricted to the existing modes of communication at hand, or they have to dormant themselves until the weather clears away. Helping these individuals steer away from the rough waters of social distancing due to COVID, these remote working tools come in handy.
1) Kredily
A free cloud-based HRMS software to manage employees under the same UI, Kredily manages a number of HR verticals. Using this, you can easily access payrolls, update employee details on a single platform, manage leaves and attendance, etc., while working remotely from anywhere in India. Licence Price: 4999 USD/month Free Download Link:For Android – Click Here AppStore Ratings: 4.7/5
2) Slack Attendance Bot
An add-on with the basic Slack application, this attendance bot marks login time, and helps organize work-related communication at the same once. Using which you can plan, manage and approve leaves, allocate work shifts and much more. A perfect HR companion while remote working in India, this helps its users in time management and various other LOBs under the HR domains. Licence Price: Free Remote working in India may be a precautionary measure, however, it may hamper productivity across all sectors of the economy. Working towards an efficient regime requires technological support of remote working tools and applications. Countering COVID 19 by social isolation is necessary, but so is maintaining optimal workflow and output efficiency.
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