Working as a remote team can be very effective and efficient. As an entrepreneur, it enables you to better manage your time and energy by, for example, removing the time wasted commuting. Developing a remote team also gives you the opportunity to widen your talent search, allowing you to hire highly skilled people from different locations or countries. Without a doubt, there can be countless advantages, and while the pluses greatly outweigh any drawbacks, there can be a few challenges too. If you don’t have past experience in this kind of workforce management, it’s not always easy, though having the right tools can do wonders in addressing these challenges and will likely be essential to the success of your team and your business. In this article, we identify some of the low-cost and free tools that you can use to support your team to stay focused and productive.  

Communication tools

When building and managing a remote team, one of the most important elements is communication. Communication is how your team will share ideas, talk about their progress and get feedback from you and their peers. It’s also a great way to keep track of what’s happening in the team. Here are some tools you can use to communicate with your team:

Slack is one of the best tools for communicating internally between different teams and projects. It’s easy to use and has some great features that make it a perfect choice for remote teams. You can create different channels for different teams or even different projects within a single team. Slack also allows you to share files and messages with ease, making it a powerful tool to share information and ideas.

Trello is a great option for organizing your thoughts and ideas. You can create different boards where you can organize projects and tasks related to each other. This is a great way to keep track of your team’s progress and keep things organized. You can also use Trello to share different documents related to the tasks or projects, making it easy for you and your team to collaborate on a single project.

Project and time management tools

The right project and time management tools will make it easier to manage projects and communication with your team, no matter where they are.

Toggl is a time-tracking tool that allows you to track the time you spend on different tasks and projects. You can use it on your desktop or mobile app and it has some great features like a timer, stopwatch, and advanced reporting tools. Toggl is perfect for remote teams because it allows you to track time, even when you’re offline.

Trello can track time and is popular with remote teams. As well as supporting project and task organization as mentioned already, Trello also allows you to add due dates and comments to each task. Trello is free for up to 12 users and makes it a great choice for many businesses.

Google Docs is an online office suite that allows you to create, edit and collaborate on documents with your team. You can use Google Docs to share documents and spreadsheets with your team members. It’s a great way to keep track of tasks, deadlines, and milestones for each project you’re working on.

Dropbox is a great tool for keeping documents, images, and files in one place. You can share folders with your team members, sharing important documents and files with each other. It also has a mobile app, so you can easily access your Dropbox from your smartphone or tablet.

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools

In a remote team, using a CRM is critical to fostering growth and success. As the business owner, you need to stay informed about what’s happening, from the sales figures to the new leads, and the best CRM will help you to do that. A CRM solution will allow you to monitor the performance of your team, and also give you a way to share information and collaborate more effectively. Some of the best CRM tools are:

Zoho CRM is a fantastic customer relationship management tool that will help you manage your customer relationships. The tool is easy to use, and lets you create leads, add contacts and track interactions with clients. Zoho CRM also offers a mobile app that you can use to manage your team’s activities.

HubSpot Sales is a comprehensive CRM solution for your business. The tool will let you track leads, contacts, and activities, and also offers a full analytics dashboard, so you can monitor your team’s performance. The HubSpot Sales app is also available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

These are just some of the tools you can use to support your team, set goals, and keep track of tasks. Using the right tools, will not only build that sense of teamwork that is so important for a remote team and which can be more challenging to establish and maintain, but they will also support you to manage and plan strategically for your business success. The key is to choose the tools that are right for your team and your business needs. 

Do you know of another great team management tool? Please share it with us in the comments below!