It's no secret that technology allows many areas of work to be automated, and companies that decide to do so gain an advantage over the competition. So why do something manually if there are tools that can do something for us. Here are 11 of the most interesting applications that improve efficiency.
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According to the latest Eurostat research, the average work week in Poland lasts 40.4 hours. This is almost seven hours more than in the Netherlands, which is first in this respect, and three hours more than the European average. Of course, entrenched socio-cultural patterns are largely responsible for this state of affairs, but also the constantly increasing workload.
While new systemic solutions and generational changes are needed to modify the former, the latter can be dealt with individually using modern applications and tools that automate and organize work. Here are the most interesting ones.
Reclaim.ai is an application for optimizing the daily schedule, using an intelligent calendar based on artificial intelligence. The tool, with the help of AI, automatically analyzes the users' daily schedule and finds the most suitable time for professional tasks among daily habits, duties, and meetings. At the same time, it protects the calendar from overload and maintains necessary flexibility in case of a rush of more important tasks.
At the same time, Reclaim.ai automatically allocates time for breaks during the day, as well as creates set working hours and allows to maintain their structure, so that professional duties do not collide with the designated private time. An interesting feature is certainly the function of synchronizing the application with the status in the Slack communicator. Thanks to Reclaim.ai, productivity maniacs can also track advanced analyses of where and how they spend time during the week.
Sometimes poor work organization does not result from too many tasks, but from the inability to disconnect from distractions, which are plentiful in the digital world (more about detox from social media we wrote here). The solution to this ailment is a tool with a very telling name Freedom. It allows you to automatically block websites, applications and notifications that make it difficult to concentrate.
Users can also create personalized schedules that temporarily block access to the main sources of distraction, and in extreme cases - even to the entire Internet. The Freedom application also automatically synchronizes with all devices in a given ecosystem, effectively limiting excessive stimuli from the digital world and allowing better focus on tasks at work. In the premium version, it also offers special playlists to facilitate concentration.
An excessive number of stimuli does not necessarily have to concern external distractors, but the tools used for work itself. Separate applications for mail and calendar, private and corporate communicators, task management platforms, social media, cloud disk, invoice generation programs. Currently at work, we encounter dozens of different tools, the operation of which requires constant juggling of attention and considerable effort to synchronize and assimilate all information.
Here comes the "all-in-one application" - If This Then That (IFTTT). It allows you to connect and coordinate various services, environments and online devices to maximize productivity and minimize distractions. Thanks to the simple logic of "if this, then that" (If This Then That), IFTTT users can create automated data streams called applets, which within one interface trigger specific actions based on previously defined conditions. In this way, it is possible to synchronize the flow of information from over nine hundred of the most popular platforms from various categories: from Instagram, Discord, Facebook and X through Google calendar, Slack, GitHub and Mailchimp, to Dropbox, WordPress and Spotify.
Todoist is an intelligent task management platform that facilitates the creation, categorization, ordering by deadline, and setting the status of importance of daily tasks and larger projects. The software also supports recurring tasks and offers reminders about deadlines.
Managers can use it to break down larger projects into parts and assign specific tasks to employees. Each task can have its own discussion board, and users can post files related to it. Todoist also offers an activity log for tracking progress and synchronization with all the most popular calendars.
Smaller companies and startups do not always have the resources to create a separate marketing department that would develop and then implement a comprehensive promotional strategy. This also requires a lot of time. The solution to this problem can be the Digitalfirst.ai tool.
The application designed by a Polish team of programmers uses artificial intelligence and available knowledge to create the most optimal marketing strategies tailored to the needs of a specific business. It also offers access to a library of various tactics, where in addition to recommendations, users can familiarize themselves with case studies of popular brands and tricks of experienced marketers. The tool also allows managing projects in real time and assigning specific tasks to individual team members.
Another Polish application, which allows for easy and quick conduct of promotion and public relations activities. Prowly offers a contact base to over a million journalists from around the world, and an intelligent recommendation system allows for searching them in terms of preferred topics, medium, position or location.
In this way, users of the Prowly tool can quickly and easily match the message to the recipient and make sure that their press release will reach those people who may be genuinely interested in it. In this way, they save time on searching and selecting the right people to contact.
Workday is a tool that increases the productivity of HR teams, simplifying many key business activities that ensure the functioning of the company. It's a comprehensive platform that brings everything together in one place, allowing HR teams to effectively manage people, wages, benefits, and financial operations.
HR specialists, managers, and employees can easily navigate their tasks, whether it's about recruitment and onboarding, or managing performance and talent development. Workday analytics in real time also provide valuable insight into workforce trends and financial results, enabling decision-making based on data - without the need to do all the manual work associated with gathering statistics.
Heroify is a Polish recruitment tool that, thanks to artificial intelligence, streamlines and accelerates the process of selecting candidates for work. First, the application generates a list of the most optimal competencies that future employees should have, based on the recruiter's information about a given position. Then, the platform selects so-called assessments, i.e., personalized tests that allow verifying these competencies, and after they are filled in by the candidates - it prepares exhaustive comparative reports concerning each person.
In this way, recruiters can not only save time needed to review all CVs on their own, but also quickly check whether the information contained in them is reflected in reality. Importantly, the Heroify application operates fully in accordance with GDPR regulations.
Figma and CodeJet are two separate platforms, but it's worth using them in tandem. The former is one of the most popular applications for designing user interfaces for websites and web applications, while the latter allows you to easily transform these designs into ready HTML or React code. This reduces the laborious and lengthy process of UX design and implementation of individual product elements to just a few minutes. Interestingly, CodeJet is a fully Polish startup, whose ideas are revolutionizing the industry.
All the applications and tools mentioned so far require passwords, which are the first line of defense for accounts and the data stored on them. It's better if they are strong and complicated, and therefore - hard to remember. Meanwhile, every gap in memory is not only unnecessary stress associated with finding the right password or the process of setting a new one, but above all - a waste of time.
The 1Password application solves this problem. It is a password management software that stores them in a specially encrypted digital "safe". At the same time, it eliminates the need to remember passwords and encourages users to create stronger protections for their online accounts. 1Password also allows IT administrators to set minimum password strength requirements and automatically generate strong character combinations for employees.
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