These days, many businesses rely on the collaborative efforts of their employees to solve problems as well as produce new products or services. But, since telecommuting has also become more popular, it’s nice to have digital tools to aid in collaborative efforts. In my last blog I mentioned Google Drive, which is a great document sharing tool. Another great collaboration tool is Evernote Business. The free, basic version of Evernote has been around for several years and has millions of users. Basically, it allows you to take notes and archive them. The reason why it has become so popular is that the “notes” can be anything from a voice recording, to a video, to a scribble on a napkin. Once the notes have been added to an Evernote “notebook” they can be easily organized and found using Evernote’s system of tags and search functionality.
Evernote Business was launched in 2013 and costs about $10 a month per user. It is similar to the basic version of Evernote but offers some extras that really aid in collaboration. First of all, you can share any of your notes with colleagues. So, for instance, many sales teams share a database of client contacts. With Evernote Business you can take a photo of a business card and then share it with your colleagues. Evernote can search for specific contact information details from the card, like phone numbers and email addresses, so you never have to type the contact information into a database. Evernote also works well for meetings. You can take handwritten notes, photos of a whiteboard brainstorm session, or just make an audio recording of the meeting and then share it with all attendees. So, Evernote Business is a great tool to have when you want to share more than just documents or spreadsheets.