9 Amazing Android Apps For Business People

There are plenty of great apps that you can download on your phone to kill a spare 5 minutes or help organize your life, but there are some more practical ones out there as well. If you're a business person, you might not think that apps are going to help you, you're probably spending money on expensive business software instead. There are some business solutions that you need to use more complex software for, but you'd be surprised just how much you can get done with apps. If you're in the business world, these are some of the best Android apps that you should download today.

Google Calendar

You should already have Google calendar on your phone but how often do you use it? If you aren't using it already, you should seriously consider it because it's got some great features. Organization is key in business but you don't always need to use expensive project management software to help run your business. Google calendar is a simple way to make sure that you remember appointments and deadlines because you'll get notifications on your phone.

The other great benefit of using Google calendar is that you can create shared calendars with your colleagues. That's ideal if you're all working on a project together and everybody needs to keep up to date with deadlines etc. Everybody can add entries to the calendar easily, which makes organizing your work so much easier.

Google Docs    

Google docs is another great app that you can use for collaborative working. It's easy to create shared documents that everybody can edit easily from their own devices. This is ideal if you're working outside of the office and you need to work together on a project in real time. Everybody can add things and make edits and the whole group can see it right away. It's also a good way to save documents in the cloud so you don't lose anything important.

Skype

Everybody has Skype installed on their computer as standard and you probably think of it as a program to speak to relatives that live far away rather than a great business tool. But if you know how to use it right, it can be great for business. Business meetings are an important part of running a company but changes to working practices mean that people are out of the office a lot of the time. Companies are using a lot more remote workers and you might have multiple offices with employees spread out all over the place. If you want to get everybody together for a business meeting, it can be tough. You can always get everybody to travel to one office but that's costing everybody money and it's very time-consuming. But if you're using Skype, you can just video conference instead. Even if people are out and about, they can still video conference if they're using Skype for Android.

It's ideal for speaking with customers as well. Email is fine but it's not very personal and it's not the best way to build a good relationship with customers. It's a lot better to speak to them face to face on Skype instead. It's a good way to build trust between you and your customers and it means that they can reach you wherever you are and have a personal conversation with you.

Quickoffice

One of the major downsides to using an Android for business is that it doesn't support Microsoft Office. Pretty much all businesses use Office for the majority of their work so that's a big problem. Being able to access documents on the go is a massive help, especially if you work outside of the office a lot. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow you to edit your documents on the go yet but you can use Quickoffice to view them. It's not a full solution but it's better than nothing. Hopefully, in the future, you'll be able to make edits but for now, you'll have to make do with just viewing them. It's still very useful if people email you documents when you're out of the office and you need to have a look at them right away.

Microsoft Office Suite

If you do need to be able to edit documents on your phone, then you should download the Microsoft Office Suite. The reason that Quickoffice appeared before Microsoft Office Suite on this list is that it's a lot cheaper. You have to pay a monthly subscription to get the full Office package on your phone and if you're not really going to use it that much, it's not worth paying for. However, if you do find that you need to use it a lot, it's worth the money. You'll get all of the same programs that you get on the desktop version and documents can be edited seamlessly on both.

CamScanner

Scanners are a common piece of equipment in most offices and they're very handy for making copies of important documents or meeting schedules etc. The only issue is, they're pretty bulky and you'll pay more money for a printer/scanner combo than you would for a standard printer. The good news is, there's no need for a scanner anymore. The cameras on modern phones are so good and if you download CamScanner, you can just use that instead of buying a scanner for the office.

CamScanner is better than using a normal scanner because you've got a digital copy of the file on your phone right away. That means you can easily email paper documents around rather than using physical copies all of the time which is a great way to save yourself a bit of money. It has a lot of other great features as well like text recognition, so it will automatically convert a scanned document into a text file so you can edit it if you need to. You can also make annotations before sharing a document with coworkers. You can't do any of that with a normal scanner and you'll always have it in your pocket so you can use it whenever you need it.

eFax

It's so frustrating when you're dealing with somebody and they want to correspond by fax. Who has a fax machine anymore? It makes it really difficult to send documents back and forth and you'll have to find somewhere with a fax machine that you can use. Unless, of course, you just use eFax. It's a great tool that lets you send fax online easily. The person on the other end will still receive it on their normal fax machine, but you can do it all from your phone just like you would an email. If they send you a fax, you'll simply receive it on your phone rather than getting it through to a fax machine. It's ideal if you're dealing with an old fashioned business that hasn't got to grips with modern technology yet.

Slack

Communication is key in business but sometimes, people go overboard. People waste so much time answering emails at work because people are always firing off emails that aren't really necessary. That means that people have to get through a lot of junk before they get to the emails that are actually important. But if you can find a way to separate all of the quick questions that people have for each other from the important emails, people can use their time a lot more efficiently. That's why you should download a great chat app like Slack. It's a great app that people can use to chat on and easily send documents back and forth. It's very beneficial if people around the office can share expertise and ask questions of each other, but you don't want people getting buried underneath a mountain of emails every day.

Square Up

If you're running a physical business or you need to take payments from clients on the move, you need a good point of sale system. But there's no need to use an old fashioned till system anymore because you can do it all from your phone with a great app like Square Up. It's a great point of sale system that replaces the old fashioned till, it has loads of great added features and best of all, it's completely free. As well as allowing you to take payments from anywhere, you can use Square Up to manage your inventory properly, and keep track of your sales, which is a huge help. It's also great for managing your tax affairs because you've got all of your financial information stored right there. If you do it the old fashioned way, you'll be going through piles of receipts for days when you're filling out your tax returns.

Your phone isn't just a way to get in touch with people or scroll through social media and play games when you're bored. It can actually be a great business tool if you download these apps and learn how to use them properly.   

 

Tech enthusiast, Android user and founder of the first HTC blog – Nick Gray has been blogging about HTC phones before most people knew what a smartphone even was. Over the years Nick has owned and tested dozens HTC devices and is constantly flashing new ROMs to his Android phones.

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