Meeting with clients. Visiting suppliers. Presenting at trade shows. You have a lot of work to do outside the office. Fortunately, staying productive when you're mobile is getting easier, thanks to Web-based services.
Each of the following eight mobile tools can help you more efficiently manage some aspect of your business while on the go--without your having to fire up your laptop. Many of the services are free. Like any software or service, however, these tools each have some limitations, and may not appeal to everyone.
Access Company Information by Text Message
Short Message Service (SMS), or text messaging, isn't just for teenagers anymore, and Teragram's MyGads.com is a prime example of SMS's benefits for business users.
MyGads.com lets you create a Web-based repository of data, such as employee and partner phone numbers, shared calendar events, and wiki-style information about your company's products or services. You can set up multiple "Gads"; each Gad is a set of text or HTML-formatted information, such as a calendar or a phone list.
Using natural-language queries, you can retrieve information from your Gads by sending an SMS message from your cell phone, or by using a Web browser or instant messaging application. You can create and update Gads using the same access methods.
For collaboration purposes, you can share each Gad with a specific group of people. Access to your Gads can be password protected, with varying privileges (such as the ability to update) assigned to different users. For example, you could give employees the ability to access and update your company's phone directory while denying that access to anyone outside the firm.
MyGads.com can be particularly helpful for grabbing information on the go. The service, currently free, is expected to be supported by advertising at some point.
Get Alerts When Important Clients E-Mail You
Every day, countless e-mail messages swarm your in box. Wouldn't it be nice to receive an alert when an message arrives from one of your top clients?
That's the idea behind TeleFlip, a free new service. TeleFlip will automatically forward e-mail from people you specify, as SMS messages to your cell phone.
Due to SMS's length limitations, e-mail messages are broken into text messages of no more than 120 characters each. Unfortunately, that means that a lengthy e-mail will arrive as multiple text messages, and not necessarily in the correct order. You can't view attachments, for obvious reasons. And unless you have an unlimited text plan, your cell phone service charges could quickly accumulate. Nonetheless, for instant alerts of messages from important business contacts, TeleFlip could be a lifesaver.
Retrieve Your PC's Files, Using Your Phone
Given the risks and hassles of carrying a laptop, traveling without one is tempting. Inevitably, though, if you've gone on a trip and left your laptop at home, you'll wish that you had brought a particular Word document or other file with you. That's where a remote-access service such as WebEx PCNow comes in.
In its most recent incarnation, WebEx PCNow version 4.0 (which costs $10.35 per month) allows you to view and access files residing on your Windows-based PC or Mac via the Web browser on any other computer. You can also access files remotely through any mobile Web browser, such as those on Treos, BlackBerry devices, and iPhones.
Using your smart phone, you can share documents on your office PC with others; view Outlook calendar entries, contacts, and e-mail; and search your computer's hard drive. And you can make Skype calls from your mobile device, too--even if your smart phone doesn't support the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service.
A reality check: Remotely accessing your computer's hard drive, especially with a smart phone (which lacks the high-powered processor of a PC), can be sluggish.
Track Expenses on the Go
Intuit's new Quicken Online is a $3-per-month service that lets you enter expenditures and track budgets and expenses from any computer or mobile Web browser. Though the service has been optimized for the Apple iPhone Safari browser, the same is not yet true for other mobile Web browsers. (Sites optimized for mobile browsers tend to draw and refresh more quickly and look better when viewed on small screens.)
With Quicken Online, you can aggregate and categorize all your online account transactions; create charts showing income and expenses; and add, delete, and edit categories. Quicken Online may be attractive to sole proprietors for tracking business-travel expenses for tax purposes, as the service can export data to Intuit's TurboTax software. The service is not designed for companies needing QuickBooks or other, more-robust business tools, however.
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Neil McAllister