Our Favorite Apps For Working Remotely
During this health emergency, many of us are confined to our home offices taking meetings from the internet rather than face-to-face. While many large organizations have tools and platforms already in place to enable remote work, many small business, entrepreneurs and non-profit organizations are facing challenges when selecting the right set of platforms to continue business and serve their clients and constituents.
In this time of uncertainty and with many of us thrown from the status quo eGuide’s core values remain more prominent than ever: “Do Something that Helps Someone” and “Learn & Teach.” As a team we are committed to continue supporting our partners and anybody in need of our services. To honor that, we have started by putting together a list of our favorite platforms for collaboration and remote work, all of which we use in our everyday work, not just in times of social distancing. The platforms listed here have also eased the burden by making premium features available at no cost or extending trial periods indefinitely.
ZOOM
Video Conferencing software with support for multiple platforms, scheduling future meetings, webinars, and digital signing, amongst other functions. What more could you ask for? For the past week the eGuide team has utilized Zoom for a daily morning check-in. Zoom allows you to share your screen for other attendees to look on when explaining how to execute certain tasks or simply to keep your team on the same tab.
Zoom has not only reduced the restrictions on free plans, but they’ve also shared some great content around best practices for working from home and hosting digital events. During the rest of the month they will also be hosting a number of webinar events to help others become familiar with their platform - you can learn more about it here.
Since most of us are practicing social distancing and couped up at home, Zoom allows you to add in a virtual background so you can pretend you're on vacation from the comfort of your couch. Lauren has transported to space over here...
Make sure to include your furry friends in video calls as well!
G SUITE
Google Suite is packed with all the business essentials: Gmail, Slides, Sheets, Docs, Drive and even a web conferencing interface. Their Slides, Sheets, and Docs apps make collaboration and file sharing for presentations, spreadsheets, and documents an efficient and effortless task. Starting at $6/month per user, G Suite offers great value for a relatively low monthly payment and is constantly being updated and adding new features.
Qualified non-profit organizations can access the entire suite for free after completing some simple steps. To assist all Google Suite clients, Google has made Google Meet Premium available to all customers, for those not familiar with Google Meet, it is a very powerful virtual meeting and video conferencing solution that offers live streaming feature and compatibility with conference room equipment all built in within the G Suite platform.
SALESFORCE
One of the most powerful business tools out there. Salesforce enables sales, marketing, and service teams to collect data and turn it into actions with their powerful analytics, automation, cross platform integrations, and mobile ready apps. Operating entirely in the cloud, Salesforce allows organizations and clients to continue working together even during lockdown.
Their incredible Non Profit Success Package (NPSP) allows non-profit organizations to engage with constituents and maximize donor potential. Not to mention qualifying organizations can receive up to 10 licenses for free. As part of their commitment to making the world a better place and their Ohana culture, Salesforce is offering free access for qualified emergency response teams, call centers. and care management teams for health systems affected by Coronavirus. They also have made some of their platforms and features available for free, such as Tableau.
Tableau has developed a free data resource hub to help organizations understand Coronavirus data in near real-time. It uses case data compiled by Johns Hopkins University as well as data from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER
Finally we want to remind you that eGuide is dedicated to help you and your organization make it past this difficult time. Echoing the words of our own Chief Executive Intern (CIO), Gregory Perrine, we want to reiterate our commitment to helping you: “Partner is not a word we take lightly. We are willing to do what it takes to make sure that any changes your organization is handling is well supported, and fully believe that technology is a key to ensure that organizations are able to continue business as normal. We know it's not an "if" we will make it out the other side, it's more of a "when", and we are thankful for anything we can do to help”
Stay safe. Eat well. Wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. And please, please, please, stay inside if you can.
