The Tools You Need to Work Online

Allow me to outline a few things to get this going effectively. The first thing you need? An email account.

We all have email, and it’s pretty straight forward. But to do this right, your teams should all be on a single email so that you can share emails and calendars (for scheduling) across the entire team. All this makes the transition easier.

Then, you’ll also need a cloud-based storage system, whether that’s Dropbox, G Suite, Box.com, or virtual copies of your team’s PCs, you need a quick and easy way to access and collaborate on files as a team. As it stands, many collaboration tools are already built into your email service provider: I know a lot of people using these tools to run their business domains just fine.

Next, you’ll need to set yourself apart from competitors. How so? With an agile and responsive business, which you achieve with a project management tool. A program that allows you to keep track of tasks, together. Keep track of to-do’s while your team is working in different locations. Programs include Asana, Trello, Click-up, Base Camp.

All of these different tools will allow you and your team to keep tasks in one place while keeping everyone organized and moving forward. Emails will create clutter and aren’t as efficient as project management tools – so, I suggest you transition over to a project management tool.

Also, there’s no need for dense setups: you can use these programs as to-do lists initially, where you collaborate on these lists with your team. As you establish a norm and protocols with your team, you can start to experiment with the bells and whistles that come with a number of these free or low-cost project management tools.

The next tool is a messaging system. Programs include Slack, G Chat, and others. Let me preface this by saying that, for quick conversations, you should set some guidelines on how your team is going to use it. Namely, it shouldn’t be used for long conversations. Questions that require a lot of detail will ultimately cause something to get lost in the shuffle. Especially because when we write things out, it just isn’t as clear as when we discuss things face-to-face.

Finally, the last thing that you need – outside of email, cloud storage, and a messaging service – is some sort of telecommuting option. Google Hangouts is free and you can use that to meet with your team members, your contractors, clients – or you can move to Zoom, which is free for one-on-one calls, and free for group calls for the first 45 minutes.

All in all, these are the crucial tools needed to take your business online.
And what if you have a product-based business? As you can imagine, it’s a lot easier to install these tools or start using them if you’re a service-based business. But what if you’re a product-based business?