Smartphones are a critical part of your business’ productivity, but sometimes you and your employees might have differing views on how to translate that productivity into profitability for your business. If you want to avoid the pitfalls associated with smartphones, well, today’s article might just be for you. Here are four tips and tricks you can use to get your smartphones to work for you.

Use Cloud-Based Productivity and Communication Tools

Smartphones are only as effective as the tools they are equipped with, like productivity applications and communication platforms. You’ll want to ensure that you have access to your email, productivity apps, and file sharing, as well as tools that allow you to stay in touch with your team members. If you can utilize the appropriate tools, your smartphone productivity will increase considerably.

Limit Your Notifications

To optimize productivity with smartphones, you’ll want to control your notifications whenever possible. The reason is simple; fewer notifications means fewer distractions. You might have important phone calls or texts to receive, but we bet that all those other notifications from social media and other apps don’t need to bog down your workday. We recommend that you disable notifications from specific apps, especially during the workday or hours of operations, so you can go about it distraction-free (well, in terms of notifications anyway).

Minimize Digital Clutter

Similarly, your smartphone shouldn’t be packed with time-wasting applications that don’t have any workplace-related purposes. This is especially important for any company-owned devices that have been issued to your employees. You must have policies in place that control the applications your employees download to these devices, as they could be taking up valuable space (and time).

Bring Your Own Device

With a BYOD policy, you’re allowing employees to use their own personal devices, like their smartphones, for work purposes. This might initially seem like a bad idea, but when you consider the costs associated with providing devices for your staff, it might seem like a decent enough alternative. Furthermore, employees are more likely to be productive with their own devices, which they are familiar with, so it’s often not a bad idea to at least entertain the use of BYOD. If you choose to implement this, you need to have a clear policy in place dictating how your employees use these devices.

To help your business be as productive with smartphones as possible, we recommend you implement a Mobile Device Management (MDM) policy. With MDM, you’ll have an easy way to see how each of your employees are using their devices. It’s a great way to ensure that your smartphones are working for you, not against you.

To learn more about how we can help you get started with mobile device management and smartphone productivity, reach out to Network Synergy at (203) 261-2201.