Evernote becomes an indispensable part of my business life. Last week I simply sit down and looked at my Evernote account to see how and why I use this tool for my business purposes.
I have been using Evernote for several years, but the intensity of my use of this tool becomes quite larger in the past year, which leads me to take a premium account for their services.
How I use Evernote is divided into two parts in my life: personal and business life. Personal is everything that I want to remember but comes from my personal life, my family, my friends… Or everything that has not any connection with my business. This is not part of this post because here, I want to talk about business and Evernote as a part of it.
As a small business owner, I need something that will always be around me and something that will make me a more productive entrepreneur. I don’t have a large budget to spend on tools that will give me this type of environment in my business, and because of that, I chose Evernote.
Here I want to share one portion of my different business parts where Evernote plays a big role.
1. Evernote as a paperless tool.
I found this tool very important in the implementation of my paperless efforts in my small business. It’s simply become my electronic cabinet for all the paper that comes to my business or simply is created in my business. The biggest advantage is that all that paper is close to me, regardless where I am located. Using different tools I can automate a larger part of this process that will be part of some other post here on entrepreneurship in a box.
2. As a read-later tool.
In the last several years, I have used different tools to manage my read-later activities. When I find something interesting online that can be useful in increasing knowledge in my business, and I don’t have enough time to read it immediately I need to mark that link to read it later. There are many tools for this purpose that are probably better than my solution, but simply I found it very distractive for me when I need to use different tools for different activities. Because I already use Evernote for different stuff in my business, it becomes logical to manage my read-it-later activities.
3. As an invoicing tool.
I do not use specific invoicing solution. Simply, my invoicing system contains Evernote and Numbers template for my invoices. In this system, Evernote is an electronic cabinet for my invoices, but also it has my invoice template that can be accessed through my Mac, iPhone or iPad from everywhere. In such a way I can easily manage all my issued invoices, but also I can easily create and send the invoice immediately despite my physical location.
Related: How to Have Multiple Phone Numbers on One Cell Phone: A Step-By-Step Guide
4. Evernote as the note-taking tool.
Because it’s always close to me, it is logical that each note about ideas, or something else can be placed in this tool. Sometimes I am using Penultimate on my iPad when I want to make hand-written notes or some simple drawings that are automatically placed in my Evernote account.
5. As a planning tool.
Planning is one of my everyday activities in my small business. Again, Evernote is great for this purpose. I can simply write a draft plan that later will be improved as a part of my review process in Evernote account. I use tables where easily can measure planned results and achieved results after implementation of the specific plan. In such a way, the whole process of improvement of my planning activities and achieving activities are always around me. From this initial plans and improvement processes, comes other new plans for implementation.
6. Evernote as a collaboration tool.
I use Evernote as a collaboration tool with my team or customers when I work on projects with them. As a cloud based solution Evernote is wonderful for this purpose. Because I have a premium account, I can easily share whole notebooks where everyone with whom the notebook is shared can contribute to the work.
7. Evernote as a brainstorming tool.
As I mentioned previous, Evernote as a robust note taking tool is a simple solution for brainstorming process in my business. Simply, I create one notebook with my basic ideas that later will be shared with members of my business team where everyone can contribute in the brainstorming process regardless their physical location.
8. Evernote as a delegation tool.
I know that there are specific solutions for this purpose, but again because I need one solution to many aspects of my business I chose Evernote as a delegation tool. I have created a notebook for each person in my business team who is shared with them. There, I can put different tasks that can be easily followed and tracked for accomplishment.
9. Evernote as a sales team support tool.
I don’t have a robust sales team, but I need knowledgeable and competent sales team who will always know to handle each possible situation in the sales process. This is important because in such a way Evernote becomes tools where all of us can share different experience from different contacts with customers.
10. Evernote as an employee educational tool.
Another important usage of Evernote in my business is educating all members of my team. Because I have already built my systems with different educational materials as manuals, guides and how to materials, Evernote becomes a perfect place where everything is and will be collected and available to all my employees according to the needs of the specific working place.
Evernote is an excellent tool for small businesses. It’s cheap and available for most used platforms and devices.
Do you use Evernote in your business? Share with us your experience or ideas how a small business can use Evernote.
