The iPad –
Can It Benefit Your Business
Here is a review of mine about one of the newly "human-keened" technological devices and how it could be used to harness every users business life.
And here I stand to ask you; Is your business embracing new technology
such as the wide usage of iPad?
Find out how it can benefit your business if not with each
new iteration of the iPad, people wonder how they’ll be able to use one to
their advantage in a business context. The most recent additions have included
the Retina
Display, which increases the screen resolution and makes everything
look sharper than ever, and the capability to run 4G data plans, which allows
faster download speeds – very useful for the traveling businessperson. So is
the iPad a good fit for you?
Read on to find out.
The introduction or invention of iPad to the tech-world has provided us all with a wider range of resources that are meant to benefit the users...
Apps
First and foremost, the main
benefit of iOS – the operating system on which the iPad runs – is the sheer
quantity of apps available to you. There are tens of thousands of apps specifically
designed for business purposes, so there’s plenty for you as a businessman or woman to choose from,
whether you’re filling in a spread sheet or hosting a conference call.
They’re
all easily found and simple to browse, and there’s also the Apple VPP (or
Volume Purchasing Program) that could be used if you need to buy a large number of apps to cover
the whole company.
Improved Productivity
From simple things such as a
calendar to let you see your scheduled appointments on the go, through the
ability to access your emails wherever you are, to jotting down minutes and ideas
at the touch of a button,to adding another lists of task to your "to-do'' list, the iPad comes pre-installed with a number of useful
business applications.
There are even more to choose
from in the App Store, like Evernote, which can take notes, photos and audio
and sync them wirelessly with your computer, or OmniGraffle, for flowcharts and
diagrams with a professional finish. The iPad seems designed to keep you
working at your most efficient.
Meetings
Most people know of FaceTime and
Skype already – both are apps designed for face to face video chatting – but
there are a whole host of alternatives apps available to you. Fuze allows you to host
video conferences, in HD, with a large number of participants, whilst
GoToMeeting lets you attend sessions together while sharing presentations with
each other.
Documents
The iPad (thankfully!) supports
all major file types, from Word documents to PDF, and has a number of its own
intuitive apps to make their creation easier than ever. Designed to take advantage
of the touch screen, apps such as Pages (for Word documents) and Numbers (for those
on Excel) are simple, efficient and beautiful.
If you need to create an
eye-catching presentation or two, then you’ll want Keynote, and to share and
retrieve files to and from a number of sources, try Files Connect or SharePlus
with SharePoint. You can even fill out forms and insert your signature at the
touch of a button (or screen).
Point-of-Sale
and In-Store Displays
Any business could benefit from
having an interactive in-store display – such as the iPad kiosk from Evoke – as they are convenient, modern and
incredibly user-friendly. The benefits are many, from informing your customers
about the latest information to being able to reduce waiting times in your
store, and as such they become invaluable.
You can even use an iPad or an
iPad kiosk as a point-of-sale: using a point-of-sale app will allow you to
conduct transactions from wherever you may be, thus making your business as
portable as you are! Though all this have to do with familiarizing your with the as much as you can.
And this makes you entirely flexible,
allowing a potentially massive increase in sales, and when you’re not busy
making the most of the business side of your iPad, you can always unwind with a
movie or bust the stress with a few games of Angry Birds…
