What are productivity and collaboration tools for business? 

By Anna Jordan on Small Business UK - Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs

Keeping your business productive is quite the puzzle in today’s landscape. 

There are so many platforms and solutions available, and the sheer number of options can be overwhelming. That’s where we come in. In this article, we’ll be guiding you through what business productivity tools are, how they can benefit your business and which ones are right for you. 

What are business productivity tools? 

Business productivity tools do exactly what they say on the tin – they provide administrative, operational or organisational support to help your business improve efficiency and output. You probably use a few already: calendars, spreadsheets and document sharing, to name just three. Even non-digital tools such as whiteboards and paper diaries can be classed as productivity tools 

The aim of business productivity tools is to streamline the day-to-day running of your business by automating tasks, enhancing your business functionality and reducing admin costs.  

Many modern productivity tools bundle lots of different products into one solution. One collective productivity tool you’re likely to be familiar with is Google Workspace (though you may remember it as G Suite). It includes Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Meet and Sheets.    

Many also now incorporate an element of (or rely heavily on) artificial intelligence (AI) to improve their performance. For example:  

Chatbots: Chatbots can greet your online customers when they visit your website, guiding them to the right products for them and handling their queries. 
 
Task and project management: Streamline your operations and keep everyone in your team up to date on what tasks need to be completed. Set up your workflow in whatever way works for your business and check off each task as you go. To make you more efficient still, task and project managers can analyse historical project data and make predictions.      
 
Meeting assistants: AI meeting assistants can automate meeting scheduling, recording and meeting transcriptions, integrating right into your existing platforms.   
 
Email management: Automate the sorting of your inbox, filter out the important from the not-so-important emails and place your messages into categories.  
 
Presentations: Use AI to improve your presentations. Turn your text into visuals, choose your own colour scheming and export your presentation so it’s ready when you are.  
 
Automation: Automate more basic tasks such as inventory control and drafting emails. It can help you to reduce your costs while increasing efficiencies.   

Collaboration tools for business 

Teams that are well-connected and have strong communication are shown to increase productivity by 20-25 per cent, according to McKinsey.   

That’s why you should invest in collaboration tools for business. You’ll probably know these as communication tools in the realm of Meet, Teams, Slack or Zoom. Collaboration also comes in the form of file sharing (WeTransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive); project management tools such as Asana and Trello; document collabs; online whiteboard; and even Google Analytics/GA4. 

Remember that the best collaboration tools for small business will be appropriate to the size of your business and your teams’ needs. Many of them integrate seamlessly into one another, meaning you can perform multiple functions without having to toggle between different platforms.  

4 essential small business productivity functions 

When it comes to small businesses specifically, these four key productivity functions are the bedrock of an efficient and collaborative organisation. 

Communication: Enables communication between people inside and outside your organisation, including one-to-one and group chats, and chats dedicated to specific teams or projects.  

File sharing: Fosters collaboration by making it easy to pass on documents with clients and other members of the team. 

Task and project management: Gives you an overview of what tasks you have in the pipeline and, to assign tasks, set deadlines and track them as they go from brief to completion.  

Calendar: Organise your own schedule and arrange in-person and online events and send invites to both internal and external people.  

How to choose productivity tools for your business 

Every business faces specific challenges and assessing what needs you have can help you select the most suitable productivity tools for your needs. For example, if managing your sales pipeline is a particular pain point, a customer relationship management (CRM) system will make your working life a lot easier.  

Modularity: Some productivity tools operate on a modular basis, allowing you to pick and choose what functionality you want to use so you only pay for what you need. Ask yourself how these features help you solve your pain points? Do you have the features on another platform already? You should also assess how well the tools integrate with the software you’re already using.  

Ease of use: Judge how easy it is to use, and how easy it is for your employees to be trained to use the productivity platform effectively – the last thing you want to do is invest in a solution that’s so complicated it ends up hampering productivity.  

Customer support: Business support is going to be crucial, especially in the early stages. Go for a solution which has different customer contact options (phone, email, chatbot) which are accessible at suitable times of the day.  

Affordability: Cost is critical, of course, but don’t skimp on features that would benefit your business. If you’re a micro business or sole traders, you could opt for a free or freemium version initially, allowing you to get a sense of the tool’s suitability for your needs before making a purchase. 

Remember to assess the performance of any productivity tool you try out before rolling it out across the whole business. You can do this by measuring how it performs against your key business metrics, such as reduced operational costs or improved efficiency.  

In focus: Google Workspace 

Google Workspace could be just the solution you need to improve your business’ productivity.  

Most businesses are pretty familiar with Google as the world’s premier search tool, so Workspace solutions like Meet, Gmail, Sheets or Slides should fit easily into your workflow.  

As you’re upgrading your productivity tools, try an AI solution such as Gemini for Workspace. Rather than being separate from the rest of Workspace, Gemini is built directly into every element, including Gmail, Docs, Sheets and other Google solutions. Among its features, Gemini identifies trends and finds business opportunities. It can also help with product pitches, generate marketing pitches and project plans, draft personalised customer emails and give a boost to your recruitment by drafting job specs.  

ChatGPT can also be integrated into Workspace. You can use it with Gmail to save time by generating email summaries and translating email into 13 languages. You could also use the ‘improve draft’ feature to suggest improvements as well as analysing text for discriminatory or offensive language, or ethical issues. 

All Google Workspace plans come with a business email address and collaboration tools including Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms and Sites, along with a 14-day free trial.  

Find out more here.  

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