How to Maximize Your Productivity Using Digital Tools

Ever since the digital transformation started, numerous digital solutions have been developed. Especially in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for practical and easy-to-use tools that promote productivity in the home-office has risen drastically. Since it is difficult to choose the right digital tools, it is important to know what features to look after.

The Drawbacks of Manual Work Processes

Until recently, you couldn’t imagine working without paper and pen. Today, however, everything is different. Whereas the office used to be a constant chaos of paper and organization, today’s digital tools make it possible to work neatly and clearly. 

The ways of working back then had a particularly bad effect on morale and employee satisfaction. Although some people still prefer the traditional way of working with paper and pen nowadays, it leads to many disadvantages. 

First and foremost, manual work processes are time-consuming. What could be done automatically in just a few minutes thanks to digital tools, takes hours or even days due to cluttered and time-consuming work. This time-consuming and monotonous work results in low employee satisfaction, which in turn lowers efficiency. This leads to employees working with less focus. Thus, mistakes happen more easily, which can result in the work having to be done all over again. As you can see, a vicious circle is created. To avoid this, it is advisable to switch to digital solutions. 

How to Find the Right Digital Tool

Digital solutions bring many benefits, but in order to find the right ones, you need to set specific requirements. There are various types of digital tools that offer solutions for different work areas. Whereas communication tools allow people to communicate and exchange documents from all over the world and at any time, tools for project time tracking automatically document your project activities in relation to the resources. Briefly, the right digital tools lead to higher employee satisfaction and increase innovation, communication and transparency within a company. 

What to Look After in Digital Tools

In order for digital tools to promote efficiency in the workplace, it is necessary that they meet certain requirements. First and foremost, it’s especially important that digital solutions simplify work processes. If a software is difficult to set up and takes more time than it saves, the tool is not promoting efficiency, but simply just a waste of time.

In addition to being easy to use, the software’s display must be clear, easy to understand and, in the best case, customizable. The personalizability of a tool allows companies to ideally map their work processes, assign appropriate color markings and determine internal company designations. Depending on how the tool will be used, it’s also worth looking for tools that work well in teams.

What Kind of Digital Tools You Need 

Depending on the problems you want to solve, different tools are suitable for you. Do you want to improve the quality of your time tracking, planning, communication, or do you want to improve your project management? There is a solution for everything on the market, just waiting to be found by you. The potential of a digital transformation should be recognized by all business leaders and used accordingly. 

In order to get started, you should make sure to first implement digital solutions in the basic areas of your business such as:

• Time Tracking
• Task Management
• Communication
• Project management

Whereas time tracking is legally required in some countries, it brings many pros that lead to companies tracking their working time for their own purposes. Tracking the working time not only helps keep an overview of absences and overtime, but also improves the transparency in companies, letting CEOs and project managers know how much time was invested in which task. Speaking of tasks, task management is the next thing you should invest in.

Knowing who does what at which time further improves the transparency in companies, which ultimately leads to less meetings, since not every task needs to be discussed separately. Big emphasis needs to be put on communication. It should always be made sure that employees have a good, stable and reliable communication tool, which is easy to use. As for project management, practical tools help keep an overview of the project status as well as the finished tasks and the open budget. 

There are many different digital tools one can implement in his/her business, however, it is important to make sure they don’t hinder the employee’s productivity, efficiency or well-being, but on the contrary, support it.