When the C-Suite of some of the worlds leading companies join in unison to vote in favour of a business tool, we’re kind of obliged to listen. Today, we’re looking at some of the apps that have got leading CEOs excited. These apps are doing the business for some of the titans of businesses, so lets dive a little deeper to see what secrets they reveal
1) The eternal quest: Inbox zero
You don;t have to be a CEO to know that email is both the great blessing and the great curse of our age. For those under 30, many wonder how we ever used to conduct business in the dark days that predated the worlds most popular method of business communication. Whilst email has undoubtedly brought about many stellar benefits, it also causes its fair share of headaches. Its ‘always on’ in an utterly unrelenting manner and it causes its users to chase the eternal quest: Inbox zero.
If we think we have it bad, imagine being the CEO of the company. Whether your the founder and chief exec of a smaller start-up or the corporate CEO of a leader global conglomerate, you’re the focal point of the entire organisation. Therefore, you receive more than your fair share of emails. If you work in the service industry, like the CEO and founder of the global 500 INC top agencies, then you really face this problem. So Likeable’s Carrie Kelben is well placed to provide the answer: Dropbox mail for iPhone.
Dropbox is the storage revolution of its age, and its iPhone mail box comes loaded with tools to help you prioritise your inbox, your replies and your to-send list. It also has a gamification element, which according to Kelben pushes her to be ‘more responsive’ which is ‘key as CEO’.
2) Networking
When it comes to the social web, Mark Zuckerberg knows a thing or two about how things work. As founder and CEO of Facebook, he’s built the 800 pound gorilla of the social web. His creation is less relevant for CEO’s though, who instead favour its business equivalent – LinkedIn.
Ekaterina Walter discovered this whilst penning her bestselling book on Zuckerberg – “Think LikeZuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook’s Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg.”
Networking has always been vitally important in business. The old saying “its not what you know, its who you know” has been rolled out at business school for generations. However its been more widely accepted and preached by the ‘been there, done that’, experience hardened kinds who got their degree in the university of life. These are the people who have used their networks to make their fortunes, and are not about to forget that now.
LinkedIn is the essential tool for keeping up with that network. As we about to enter 2014, the worlds workforce has never been more transient and fast moving. Where once people would get a job for life, they now seek new opportunities within 18-36 months. LinkedIn tracks that.
Perhaps more than anything though, Linkedin is the essential source of industry news.
We all work harder and longer, so finding time to scour the net to read the industry buzz is an ever greater challenge. LinedIn brings that news straight to you, slicing and segmenting it based on your network to make it hyper targeted. If for no other reason, LinkedIn is an essentially daily tool for the worlds C-Suite.
3) Fast communications
The flaws with email render it a surprisingly weak tool for quick fire Q&A within the workplace. Texting can be too casual and still caries a social stigma (many are yet to appreciate a text off their boss let alone their CEO), which is where some smaller companies are capitalising on Skype. Not only does Skype let you make cheap or even free calls – any CEO is keen to promote such a great cost saver for their organisation – but it also has a robust and highly popular instant messenger service.
Dont want to run the risk of your question getting caught in an email jam? Push the question through Skype.
4) Real-time analytics
Nearly all businesses lean increasingly heavily on their web presence in this day and age. Step forward the leading free analytics provider – Google, with their Google analytics service. For many, Google analytics becomes every bit as obsessive as checking for emails.
Paul Berry is a good example. In a different life, before founding RebelMouse, Berry was the CTO of the Huffington post website. HuffPo, now part of the AOL family, was the runaway success of content websites. This success naturally meant that the site was seeing incredible visitor numbers, but even more incredible user visitor growth rates.
Now optimised for mobile, Google analytics provides this kind of data in an abundance. Its a great mix of the kind of relatively superficial overview data that a CEO may obsess over (Visitor numbers, page impressions, conversion rates etc) as well as the more nitty gritty data segmentation that he may leave to his data nerd. All presented beautifully and intuitively.
5) Online security mastered
Any CEO has got to take their online security seriously, and the standout tool in the market is currently ‘Passback’. Passback securely stores over 500 passwords for the entire company, from access to the bank accounts to the social media accounts.
So there we have it – 5 must have apps for any aspiring CEO.
