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3 Great Mobile Apps for the Savvy Business Person

  • Franklin Rivera

No doubt, business people rely on their mobile phones every day to keep on track of emails, news, appointments and, to some extent, their mobile networks. I happen to be an Android nut, so I am always looking for applications that can save me time and improve my workflow.

Being an Android user, I am mostly familiar with Android apps, so this review is mostly geared towards Android users. However, two out of the three apps reviewed here are available for the iPhone.

 
Executive Assistant

This is one of the first apps that I ever purchased from the Android market, or the Play Store as it’s called these days. There is a free version which is ad free, but this app is so helpful that I thought it was worthy of its price tag.

This app can be the one-stop-shop for your home screen. You can view and access your calendar, Twitter, Facebook, phone, RSS feed and email straight from this app. It offers a preview of all of the former as well as the ability to read the former from your favorite apps. Each tab is linked to your actual reader, so when you click on the phone, Twitter, Facebook, reader, or calendar icon, the appropriate program is executed. Executive Assistant also offers several widget views from icons only to full screen display. This is a must have if you want to access all of your information from one screen.

 
Pulse

Pulse is a news reader that offers its users access to their favorite magazines, newspapers and even Google Reader feeds. It synchronizes for reading over all platforms and will even synch with Instapaper, Read It Later and Evernote. You can even access your Facebook and Twitter feeds within the application.

What I particularly like is the widget, which can be set to show the latest feeds from your favorite publication/website. All feeds are presented in a mosaic style and can be spread across several pages within the application. For example, I have one page that is all of my social media news, with the second and third pages dedicated to photography and my personal social media sites. It allows for posting and sharing interesting articles to your Twitter and Facebook pages, as well as any other application you may have on your phone, such as Evernote. This application is a must!

 
Evernote

With well over 10 million installs, forgive me if you already know about this application. But it is so helpful that I figured it was worthy of a mention again!

Evernote is your personal notebook for your smartphone. The product description says that you can take notes, capture photos, create to-do lists, record voice reminders–and make these notes searchable across all of your devices!” And it does exactly that! What I particularly find cool is that if you have an appointment and you want to take notes during that time, it will automatically populate the note header with the name of your appointment. I even like to save interesting articles to Evernote to share later across my social media platforms.

The widget is also very easy to read and provides me with a snapshot of my latest notes without having to open up the application. Evernote even has an extension for the Google Chrome browser which is nice when you are working from your laptop or PC. Install this app if you haven’t already!

Looking for more information on mobile business apps? Check out our side-by-side comparison of leading platforms in the Top 10 Mobile Device Management Software report.

Franklin Rivera: Franklin Rivera has had over 20 years of leadership and sales and marketing experience. A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Gulf War veteran, Frank is no stranger to leadership and what it takes to be successful. After leaving the military, Frank used his experience and skills to launch a very successful career with 3 major healthcare companies, Novartis, GlaxoSmithkline and most recently, Johnson and Johnson. He has been responsible for the successful launch of several product lines whose sales have always surpassed national benchmarks. Frank also developed an algorithm based off of the Pareto Principle for territory product management that helped propel his colleagues to the top of national sales rankings. After receiving his MBA, Frank decided to leave corporate America in order to provide small to midcap businesses with the big business direction he had received throughout his career. A strong believer that personal development helps to foster business growth, he started cINnected (kin-nek-ted) Business Solutions in order to provide companies with tailored strategies for growth, focusing on personal development coupled with a strong company vision. His passion and belief that social media would be the new marketing direction, he started Viral Visual Marketing which was a perfect marriage of his professional photography and marketing skills. Viral Visual Marketing is fast becoming a destination for businesses wishing to have a business approach to social media marketing.