Photograph of a Blackberry 7250 CDMA Smart Device, displaying the Home Screen. This particular handset is for use on the Verizon Wireless CDMA network in the USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are apps for everything, and running your business remotely is no different. New apps help business administrators do more while outside the office. One common theme in business apps, as it should be, is security. As we do more business online, more people find ways to steal our data or corrupt our online files. The best business apps provide ways to protect you, your employees and your clients while doing business online. It never hurts to get your IT professional’s opinion before installing business apps on your mobile devices.
#5 Handy Backup Small Server
This app allows you to back up mission critical applications remotely from your smartphone, tablet or other mobile device. Back up Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Oracle, Domino, SQL, ODBC databases, files and folders from anywhere. You can choose to back up to a local drive, removable media, network device, remote FTP or SFTP location. Extra plugins available allow you to customize even more features of Handy Backup Small Server. It works with Windows-based systems.
#4 Bizodo
This app works with Firefox, Chrome and Safari browsers. Bizodo is an online form builder and project manager. It allows users to build online forms with a simple point-and-click method. This app offers a high level of online security, allowing users to choose to encrypt information and SSL. CAPTCHA helps prevent your online forms from being spammed.
#3 Abukai
This app simply and quickly creates expense reports with Mobile iOS, Android and Blackberry phones. It has won Editor’s Choice for taking a tedious task that everyone hates and making it as simple as clicking a photo with your smartphone. Literally. Abuki enables users to click a photo of an expense receipt, submit it and shazam! The expense report is done.
#2 TITUS
TITUS is another safety and security app for Windows users. It allows the user to oversee sensitive data and keep data created with Microsoft Office more secure. TITUS also aids with compliance issues. Create custom labels for your sensitive information and assign a security level to it. You can make the information public or private and designate which departments have access to the data. For non-techie administrators, TITUS makes remotely controlling this information simple and intuitive.
#1 Office 365
This app is much more than just a Web-based version of Office 2010. It gives users access to cloud-based versions of the four top Microsoft business products anytime from anywhere. From your mobile device, Office 365 gives you Office, in addition to Exchange, Sharepoint and Lync. For users unfamiliar with these Microsoft products, Exchange is Microsoft’s email platform, Sharepoint allows online document sharing and collaboration among employees working together on a project and Lync provides capabilities like instant messaging, video conferencing, PC phone calling and company-wide social networking.
These apps vary in price from free to very affordable for most small businesses. Check with your mobile service’s app store or with the website of the developer of the application for information on pricing and download availability.