Reduce your workload and boost productivity: 3 technologies worth investing in for 2018

If your New Year’s resolution is to work smarter, not harder in 2018 then you’re in luck. Never has there been a wider selection of technologies, apps and programs to choose from that can reduce workload and increase productivity for you and your staff. Whether you run a small business or a large enterprise, technologies focused on these three key areas can increase efficiency and boost your bottom line.

1. Social Media Automation

Maintaining an active social media presence is no longer optional for any business. Every company – both large and small – can benefit from developing a vibrant and engaged digital community, but maintaining one requires a nearly 24/7 online presence. Thankfully a number of popular social media automation tools exist to help manage the workload, including HootSuite, TweetDeck and Sprout Social. One of our favourites for its ease of use and depth of features is Buffer.

Buffer allows you to manage up to 10 social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest, and schedule up to 100 posts per social account. You can manage all your accounts at a glance with the Buffer’s social media calendar, and curate your content with RSS integration. Real-time reporting tells you which posts are performing well, allowing you to spot emerging trends and identify key influencers.

2. Digital forms and e-signatures

What if investing in one single piece of technology could transform the way your business does nearly everything? What if that one investment helped you register new clients, place orders, track deliveries, approve estimates, log billable hours and record signatures or initials on important documents without having to print a single piece of paper?

Switching to digital forms and e-signatures will transform the way you collect, capture and save information, while improving workflow and efficiency while reducing your company’s environmental footprint. A product like Ambir’s nForm does double duty, converting all your existing paper forms to secure digital forms while also serving as a convenient e-signature pad. nForm works easily with your existing documents, whether PDF, Word or image files, and allows you to manage and send forms to your network, email, or cloud-based storage.

3. High-tech hiring

How much time does your business spend on hiring new employees? Developing and posting job descriptions, sorting and reading through hundreds of resumes and applications, interviewing dozens of prospects…the process can take months. Traditional hiring practices use a ton of resources without always delivering the desired results.

TalentSorter is a job candidate assessment tool that uses behavioral and predictive science to help you test, assess and hire the right people. It promises not only to reduce the time spent sorting resumes by 80% and reduce interviewing time by 70%, but to decrease employee turnover up to 50% by helping identify which candidates are the right fit for your company and position. The easy-to-use wizard identifies the traits most critical to success for your position, and creates a detailed assessment for that specific role which pre-screens candidates for you. Each application is then assessed and assigned a FitScore^™ out of 100: fit with job, fit with manager, fit with people, fit with company. The higher the score the better the likely “fit.” You select those with the highest FitScore to interview first, using the detailed analysis TalentSorter provides for each candidate, including a customized Interview Guide that tells you exactly what to ask each candidate.