Too many apps at work? Time for a better way

At work and at home, our lives are cluttered by the apps we use. The average person has 60-90 apps installed on their phone, uses 30 each month, and opens 9 daily. 

Just as “subscription creep” quickly leads to more spending than intended, application creep can cost businesses time and money. As managers and employees become increasingly distracted by the tools that are supposed to be helping productivity, it’s clearly time to find a better way. 

The cost of too many apps

In a 2018 report, From Workplace Chaos to Zen: How App Overload Is Reshaping the Digital Workplace, researchers at RingCentral found that 69% of workers waste up to an hour per day navigating between communication apps, adding up to 32 days per year. 

RingCentral found that the average employee uses 4 communications apps and 20% of respondents said they used 6 or more! Workers even said that navigating between apps was more annoying than doing household chores (53 percent), paying bills (52 percent), and trying to lose weight (50 percent).

Clearly the first step, as recommended by Inc., is to take current stock of applications and determine any redundancies that are creating extra hassle. While this can save some money, it still won’t solve the problem of critical information scattered across applications. 

Simplifying for focus

The folks on the Peoplzz blog give a simple solution: “Do yourself a favor and make the team work under a uniform system.” This pivotal step, they say, “keeps vital team information and communication close together.”

With important conversations happening across email, phone, and Slack and data stored in numerous applications, confusion arises as teams are unable to understand their business without a dizzying search for information. Especially as various functional teams rely on separate apps, communicating critical performance information to your whole organization requires a unified system. 

The problem of multiple-app-induced chaos can only be solved with a system of managing the most critical communication and information all in one place. 

Align’s team meeting huddle tool allows individuals to communicate their most important information to their entire team and also track progress on critical initiatives. Instead of having to log into Salesforce to see how our sales team is doing, Hubspot to see how marketing is doing, and Jira to see Tech team progress, team members only have to check Align to see all this critical information contained in one place.

Communication of key updates is also recorded in one central place, reducing need to look across email inboxes and slack channels to see what teammates are working on. This is especially helpful for remote employees, team members who spend a lot of time in the field and when people come back in the office after vacations.

The result of a centralized hub for this information is saved time and fewer headaches!

While it may sound counterintuitive, the solution to the creep of too many apps, may be another app, provided that app helps implement a uniform system for recording the critical information that leaders and employees must know to execute on business priorities.

The key to creating value when adding a new app is that the ROI on the time used within the app is high. Our KPI for users of Align is that they typically spend under 10 minutes a day in the tool. Most users spend 3-5 minutes each morning updating their teams in the Huddle Tools and another 3-5 minutes at the end of the day reviewing their priorities, KPIs and progress to stay on track to meet goals.

Aligning you organization under a system of good business habits can calm the chaos induced by too many apps in your business. Now, if only the problem of too many apps in our personal lives had such a simple solution!

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If you are interested in learning more about how a central system of business habits can help calm the chaos of the modern workplace, schedule a demo with an Align advisor today!