Web and smartphone apps are everywhere in our digital world. Pull out your iPhone and count how many applications you have. You might be surprised how many you use on a regular basis.

While some apps can be distracting and inhibit productivity in the workplace (like many social media apps), using a team app in a business environment can be remarkably effective.

Team apps help organisations communicate important information, view progress towards goals and measure performance management. Keep reading to learn why your company should be using a team app and how to implement one in your work environment.

Foster Collaboration With a Team App

Workplace collaboration is critical to every organisation. The advantages of a collaborative, engaged workforce are clear. Job satisfaction, employee retention rates and productivity are highest in the most collaborative workplaces.

But fostering a collaborative habitat is easier said than done. Thirty-eight percent of employees say there isn't enough collaboration in their company. When groups don't collaborate, departments work in silos and communication comes to a halt. Projects become stale and fall off the radar. Tasks get duplicated, wasting time and revenue. Employee engagement falters and people leave the organisation.

Whether you're an iPhone user or devoted to an Android phone, using a team app can bring business groups together. Just as social media apps like Facebook help social groups share information, stories and plan events, similar tools can help make collaborating on your business strategy easier.

For example, there are many free apps that help families organize and manage youth sports clubs. Sports team apps help parents gather information, post calendar schedules and game times. Families collaborate to organize who is bringing snacks, post live scores, decide when the next practice takes place and send private messages to one another to manage team issues.

Team apps can offer the same collaborative environment to busy workplaces. Using a collaborative app allows businesses to communicate about and manage work projects with their teammates at the click of a button, no matter where they are.

Manage Remote Teams

As technology advances and the world goes mobile, companies have realized employees don't need to work under the same roof. Many organisations have teams spread out across the world and work at varying times of the day in different locations.

Telecommuting helps companies save money on office space, but how can managers effectively supervise their employees and view the status of their work? How does an employee in the U.S. communicate about a shared project with a work teammate in Australia several time zones away?

Emails and phone calls aren't the answer. Today's workforce prefers communicating with text messages and apps, and it is proven that limiting email usage at work increases productivity. In order for remote teams to communicate and work together effectively, they need frequent contact with robust communication platforms.

The best team apps allow for remote, tracked, dynamic communication across the entire organisation, no matter the time zone or location of any individual. Team members can utilize group chats, send reminders and set up push notifications so tasks don't get lost in the shuffle.

Simplify Project Management

With a good team app, you can manage any work project in one place with everyone that needs to be involved. The best apps help multiple teams organize projects with features such as:

- Task management tracking
- KPI and target goal measurement
- Quick access to real-time reports
- File upload and storage
- Project-specific chat rooms
- Private messages

Download team apps to your computer and smartphone and you can access group project notes and reports wherever you go. Whether you are on vacation and need to check into work or reporting company news at a board meeting, you have 24/7 access to the information you need, right when you need it.

Encourage Accountability

If something isn't documented, there's no proof it happened. If a manager assigns a direct report a task but doesn't document it somewhere and it never gets done, there's no evidence it was ever assigned.

The best team apps promote accountability and personal responsibility to goals and targets in a transparent setting. When everyone in the organisation can see their goals and commitments, they are much more likely to follow through and complete them.

With an organized team app, there's no question who is responsible for what and when it should be accomplished by. Use a team app to view individual and team responsibilities in a public space, so everyone is on the same page. Vivid transparency helps motivates employees, keeps the team on track and improves productivity.  

Reduce Meetings

No one likes wasting time attending unproductive meetings all day when they could be getting important work done. Many business leaders spend countless hours in meetings reviewing strategic plans, creating performance guidelines and putting out human resource fires.

Meetings will never go away, but so they can be reduced dramatically with frequent communication on a team app. New business opportunities and customer issues don't wait for scheduled meetings. Intelligent organisations use modern applications and resources to erase unproductive meeting time from the calendar.  

For example, there's no need to set up a meeting to review the status of a new program implementation if team members document real-time progress updates in a team app. Give your employees that valuable time back by leveraging technology to manage projects and communicate effectively.

Download a Team App That Works

Samewave is user-friendly social performance management software that helps create united teams with communication tools, goal measurement and commitment tracking in a transparent atmosphere. This software can be used in a web browser and is available for download as a Mac app.

You can also find Samewave in the Google Play store for Android devices and the App Store for iPhones. Samewave is a free app with new features always on the horizon, so sign up today to improve productivity, foster collaboration and build employee engagement.