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Improving business productivity is one way that organizations are finding they can cut costs and more easily create streamlined business processes and workflows. One of the key elements to successful business is having the right tools to facilitate decision-making, administrative, marketing and sales efforts. Vendors also are realizing this importance and answering through a rapidly growing market of free and paid business productivity suites. The best way to save on business productivity software is to cut costs by using online applications and SaaS. Organizations that are quickly adopting business productivity online applications include schools, government establishments, small businesses, and increasingly, enterprise markets are transitioning to online business productivity solutions.
There are plenty of options available, both free and paid that allow businesses to upgrade to online services and business productivity suites while keeping the bottom dollar in mind. But with so many options to choose from, what differentiates the run-of-the-mill applications from the stellar ones that really make an impact? The top online applications tend to shine in these categories: reasonable learning curve, useful funtionalities, and flexible integration with other programs and services such as Outlook or mobile communications. The following are the top 4 business productivity online suites relative to the aforementioned characteristics.
What makes Microsoft Online Services unique is the familiar and intuitive user interface. Exchange Online in particular allows businesses to encourage a mobile workforce to have access to communications information when and where it is needed. Update calendaring and appointments from a mobile device or quickly respond to emails that create faster decision making and facilitate sales and marketing endeavors. BPOS allows for collaboration in every format, from meetings and live communications, to mobile access and share portals. The full suite is available at $15 per month per user and easily integrates with other programs such as Outlook and mobile devices. The price is lower for enterprise customers that purchase 250 user seats or more. The pay-as-you-go model is ideal for small to mid-size businesses seeking to save money on collaboration. While it is possible to purchase each application by subscription individually, as a suite it is considerably less expensive. There is also a less expensive, limited economy edition called the "Deskless Worker" that allows businesses to pay for a less comprehensive version of the software but still collaborate on training material and communications (to a limited extent). The suite also has an additional component, ideal for midsize and enterprise customers, which is Office Live Meeting Professional Edition. The tool allows businesses to meet with 1,000+ attendees and save live webinars for up to 360 days online from the Live Meeting website (feature only available to paid subscriptions and not during the trial phase). You can also sign up for a free 30-day trial to test drive the full suite of applications as well as Live Meeting Professional Edition.
Perhaps not as widely adopted as it deserves, Google apps offers a sutie of collaboration, communication, and calendaring solutions that improve business productivity. The only downside that made Google Apps not quite the number one contender is that it does not support more recent versions of PowerPoint and Word files and forces a conversion of the documents to the Google Apps format. The seemingly unlimited free Gmail and calendaring feature are great user-friendly tools that Google Apps offers and they have a decent level of functionality to provide a robust user experience.
The pricing is also competitive. While there is a free version available, the business user version of Google Apps offers Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, and more for $50 per user per year. This can mean savings for most businesses as long as they are willing to spend the time training on the unique interfaces. The email has a generous 25GB storage, which is also a perk of the online applications.
Being able to sync files on and offline is one of the top features offered by ThinkFree. Users are able to work offline with ThinkFree files and when they are able to connect online, the updates are synced with the online database. ThinkFree Mobile Netbook Edition currently has a limited-time introductory price of $24.95. Normal price is $39.95 (Use coupon code "THINKFREE"). Buying ThinkFree Mobile comes with an additional 1GB of online storage at ThinkFree Online.
ThinkFree can be linked to your Google account and if you choose to do so, your Google account can be moved to your ThinkFree account. The ThinkFree online workspace is free to use and is very similar to the Google Docs interface. There is also a Windows Office Live free version that also offers similar services.
Zoho offers a large number of online services that can improve business productivity for enterprise and smaller businesses. While some of the services are a little less than competitive pricing-wise, the Zoho Business suite offers pricing competitive to Google at $5 per user per month or $50 per user per year. The Zoho Business suite includes online services such as calendaring, online documents, domain-based email, and for mobile users the iPhone Access for Mail, Writer, Sheet, Show and Calendar. |