Best Software for Remote Working Teams, Meetings and Conferences

As a business owner, you already know that COVID-19 has brought on a nationwide lockdown, but it doesn’t mean that your business has to close for business entirely. Many business owners have come up with innovative ways to continue operating online, with their employees working remotely. While this is the new norm, for now, there are challenges that are faced by work-from-home teams that need to be addressed. These challenges can certainly be solved by making use of software designed specifically for remote workers, online meetings, and digital conferences.

When looking for remote software and applications, it is always best to take a few things into consideration. These are:

• Affordability
• Online availability (do all team members have access to enough data/internet service?)
• Privacy
• Security
• Method of communication

How to Connect Your Team Remotely

The question begs to be asked; What is the best software to use when you have teams working remotely? Below are the top applications, tools, and programs that many companies and individuals make use of when working remotely.

• Asana

Asana as a brand claims to simplify team-based work management and in reality, it does just that. There is both a web and mobile version of the program that allows teams to connect, organise, track and manage work and projects currently underway.

Asana is considered safe and secure to use as sharing of info can be controlled in the app/program settings. All information entered is encrypted with industry-standard encryption.

Asana is free to use for up to 15 users. Premium features in the workspace are only available to paid members. Prices start from around $13.50 per month.

• Zoom

Zoom describes itself as a leader in modern enterprise video communications. It has a reliable cloud-based platform that is ideal for webinars, chats, audio conferencing, and video conferencing. What makes Zoom popular is that it is able to collaborate with mobile as well as desktop.

Zoom claims to provide end-to-end encryption. Unfortunately, as evidenced in local news, Zoom’s video and audio meetings were not quite as private and secure as initially believed.  You can read more on the risks here. This doesn’t mean that Zoom isn’t a highly useful program to use, but if you are considering using it for sending and storing of sensitive data, do your research first.

Zoom offers a Basic Free Plan that allows unlimited meetings with many participants for up to 40 minutes. There are other pricing plans for larger conferences and longer meetings.

• Skype

Skype has earned itself a great reputation over the years as being a world-class conference, audio, and video calling program. It also offers a great messaging chat service which makes it easy for team members to keep in touch and share information at the click of a button. Skype is considered very safe to use as it does a verification check to ensure that users are who they say they are.

The program encrypts communications and ensures that no third parties are able to gain unauthorised access to communications. The payment systems are also secured and considered safe to store card details.

Skype is free to use if you are communicating with other Skype users. Users only pay to use the service if they are calling an external number or sending a text message.

• Slack

Slack is a great program for teams working remotely and is considered a good alternative to email and an effective way to keep conversations organised and tracked. Slack allows its users to organise communications in channels for group exchanges, and also allows for private messaging where individual employees can share files and information with each other.

Slack advises that data is encrypted and also offers data protection tools including Enterprise Key Management, audit logs and further protection by integrating with various data loss prevention providers. Unfortunately, Slack has been hacked in the past and this means that while the program is useful, it shouldn’t be used to share highly sensitive information, usernames or passwords.

What to Do for Safe Storage and Sharing of Data?

If you have team members that work with sensitive information you should consider using a cloud based backup service that encrypts data and password protects the information. With these services, you can set up user accounts and allowances, limit access and ensure that sensitive documents aren’t stored on-site or on personal devices, but rather in the cloud.

While working from home has become the new norm, it is important to make use of convenient, reliable and secure remote applications and software. Do your research and choose wisely – for the sake of your data security.