Our 10 Favorite Apps as a Totally Remote Organization
33Vincent is a completely remote organization with a penchant for top-tier productivity. All of our work is done online from wherever we are at the current moment, and that doesn’t slow us down one bit. In fact, most of our employees would argue working remotely actually helps us all be as productive as possible in our work.
With the onset of COVID-19, more and more workplaces are learning that working remotely doesn’t necessarily mean a decrease in productivity. This article is a handy guide to some of the top apps and programs we use to support our business and community of virtual Executive Assistants. Take a look and think about how you can use these tools to support your business too, through 2021 and beyond.
Base is the first and only software platform built specifically for Executive Assistants, by Executive Assistants. Base is focused on making it easier for Executive Assistants to be the best strategic partner they can to their executive.
Their suite of tools helps both traditional and remote Executive Assistants quickly create executive updates, keep track of their tasks, analyze calendars to find free spaces and time that could be optimized, store information about their clients, and so much more.
We’ve found that Executive Assistants who use Base save an average of four hours per week! Base has greatly improved our own workflows here at 33Vincent too - it’s hard to understate just how awesome it is to have a platform designed for assistants that integrates with everything else.
If you’re an assistant, we strongly recommend you at least give their free demo a try!
Learn more about Base here.
Vidyard is a fantastic tool we regularly use at 33Vincent. This service and extension allows you to record your desktop as well as audio for more in-depth explanations of tricky or specific topics. When you want to explain something complex or show something visually, and typing it out won’t cut it, Vidyard is there to save the day!
We use Vidyard to delegate complicated projects, provide feedback on deliverables like presentations or reports, or provide financial and organizational updates asynchronously. Vidyard helps us avoid unnecessary meetings and puts hours back into our work weeks! The best part is that this service is that it’s completely free with no video limit.
In a completely remote environment, you don’t have the ability to walk down the hall and show your colleague how to do something, or work them through a problem. With Vidyard, the hallway becomes digital and you’re only limited by what you can put on a computer screen...which is to say, not limited at all. You don’t even have to ask your colleague to get out of their chair so you can use the keyboard. This #2 spot was previously held by Loom - but since they’ve reduced their free version to a 5-minute limit, Vidyard is now the go-to choice for creating quick short explainer videos for remote teams.
Notion is another vital tool in our business of remote Executive Assistants. It functions as an all-in-one workspace where collaborators can design, create, and house information. It is ideal for everything from project management to kanban boards, wikis, calendars, and much more. Notion allows multiple users to work in the same space asynchronously across multiple time zones.
Not only is it powerful, it’s also extremely easy and intuitive to use. Notion has integrations with many other applications too. It’s almost hard to describe its many functions, so check out this quick intro video below.
Slack is a powerful chat tool which helps you stay up to date. In a remote workplace, using email exclusively would get overwhelming quickly. Slack is ideal for those smaller collaborative daily conversations.
The channels feature allows you to focus conversations within functional teams and cut down on chatter, as well as notify many people at once of a topic. Replies can be message specific too, so channels don’t get bogged down by conversation.
What truly sets Slack apart from other chat software, though, are two features: the immense host of integrations and workflow automations that it provides. If there’s an app or program, there’s probably a way to integrate it into Slack, which currently supports over 2,200 services. You can also simply automate repeated tasks or updates, saving loads of time in the long run. These two bonuses make Slack much more than just an instant messaging app.
Everyone has their own personal online meeting software they prefer, and for us it’s Zoom. The online meeting space has exploded in 2020, with many companies now offering digital meeting services.
For us, Zoom seems to have the best video quality and reliability. It’s incredibly easy to use, and has been around long enough to have integrations with calendar apps. (Try Google Calendar’s add-on for Zoom, which helps you schedule Zoom meetings straight from GCal.) Also, the 40 minute meeting limit is actually handy for keeping meetings from going on too long.
#6 Google Workspace (Formerly G-Suite)
Google Workspace swings into our top spot as the most useful collection tools for working remotely. Many non-remote businesses use the Google Suite too, and for good reason. The host of functionality from Google Workspace is astounding.
Google Workspace can cover email, calendars, cloud storage, creating text documents, spreadsheets, slideshows, fillable forms, and video meetings — and much more. It also integrates all of these services so they speak with one another very easily, and allow one login for all of the services provided.
The true benefit from using Google Workspace, however, isn’t just from all the different services it houses. The real gem here for remote work is the collaborative nature of the documents you create. Just set the permissions correctly and your colleague can hop into the document you’re working on for edits or feedback.
Last Pass is a password management system like no other. Within a completely remote team, it’s important to know who has access to which logins–and why. Last Pass allows you to easily organize your team members’ access all in one cloud-based system.
Harvest is a fantastic tool for tracking time, creating expense reports, keeping track of projects, and more.
With easy in-built timers, it makes tracking time and expenses a breeze. It also makes it easy to see who on your team is working longer, so you can shift tasks around to help your employees share the load. We use Harvest to help our part-time employees better understand how long recurring and long-term projects take them, and budget their time better for the future.
Another benefit of Harvest is its many integrations, allowing you to track your employees time in just about any app or digital tool they’re working in.
There are many, many digital photo editing sites. For us, Canva takes the cake for its ease of use, integrated stock photography, automatic layouts and resizing for different platforms, and, you guessed it — the ability for collaboration. We recommend upgrading to Canva pro so you can create multiple sizes and versions of a design with one click, download images with transparent backgrounds, and more.
Whether you need to create a quick image resize for social media or you want to design a beautiful cover image for a blog post Canva makes it quick and easy. It also has built-in file storage so you can find your images easily after creation.
#10 (Very) Honorable Mentions
Krisp.ai
Krisp.ai is a fantastic tool that automatically drowns out background noise for your Zoom calls. It’s essential if you’re working at home with kids or live on a busy street!
Cloud HQ
Cloud HQ has a suite of productivity apps which allow you to get the most out of your online tools. With Cloud HQ you can track your emails, export them to PDFs and Google Sheets, create them quickly with templates, create links to emails, and much more.
Todoist
The most fantastic to-do list application out there. Todoist has a ton of features that will help you blow through those tasks in no time, like intuitive task entering, recurring tasks, project labels, and more. (Bonus: It integrates with Notion so you can embed your to-do lists right in your Notion workspace.)
Interested in learning more about how an Executive Assistant can help your business? Click the “Get Started Today” button below, or learn more about our services here!
33Vincent has many other resources to help you maximize your time and communication with your executive assistant.
