How the New iPad is Effective for Business Productivity

How Effective is the New iPad for Business Productivity?

When you think of the new Apple iPad, what do you imagine?

Most people would envision reading e-books, watching videos, surfing the web, shopping, playing games, assembling a photo album or doing countless other creative tasks. It’s true. The Apple iPad is very versatile, and it’s quite a lot of fun for entertaining yourself. However, the iPad is also extremely valuable as a business tool. There are many ways it can be used to stay in touch, to make presentations and to work on-the-fly. There are a huge assortment of apps already available for the iPad, and more apps hit the market to increase iPad productivity every day. It’s almost impossible to list them all.

It’s easy to use your iPad for business.

To get started, here is a list of common small business tasks for which you can use an iPad.

iPad Business Productivity: Portable electronic notepad

It’s much more convenient to use an iPad for taking notes at a sales meeting or lecture. Using a pad of paper and a pen is so very last century, even if your pen is a digital recorder. You can write your notes on the screen if you like that sort of old-school approach. There are many apps that will translate it to printed text. It’s also convenient to type with an external QWERTY keyboard or the onscreen keyboard. With your notes already digitized, you can perform searches and take advantage of the iPad’s text-based features. Microsoft has an app called the OneNote that can handle text and images. You can even sync them to your company’s cloud. You can also dictate notes into your iPad.

iPad for Business: Sharing and accessing files

The days of showing up ten minutes before the start of a meeting are gone if you use your iPad to share files. Instead of handing out printouts and copied presentations, it’s far more convenient to use an app like Dropbox to distribute PDF, MP3 or MOV files from the cloud to those in attendance. That’s real multimedia. Access is immediate, and you can even edit and fine-tune your demo on-the-fly.

iPad Business Efficiency: AirPlay Mirroring

By using Wi-Fi, you can mirror the display from your iPad or iPhone to a high-def TV that is connected to an Apple TV receiver. AirPlay Mirroring first became available with iOS 5. This technology definitely adds to the iPad productivity since you can use your iPad as a whiteboard to brainstorm, to explain complex ideas or to display graphics at large meetings. You could also use this feature to make a sales pitch using apps that do not support external displays.

iPad Business Tools: Office productivity tool

Apple has several office productivity apps for word processing and number crunching like Pages, Keynotes and Numbers. There are many other third-party apps that enable the iPad for business uses like Quickoffice and Documents to Go for iOS. Those who feel cramped when using the touch-screen keyboard can select from portable keyboards like Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard Cover and ZAGG’s ZAGGkeys flex.

iPad Business Organization: Digital organizer

You can easily sync emails, contact lists, calendar notes and other reminders wirelessly to your iPad from Exchange ActiveSync. The Exchange Server transforms your iPad into a tool that you can access from anywhere. Changes are automatically, wirelessly synchronized on Microsoft Outlook and your iPad.

iPad Business Management: Simplify Business Tasks

Use your iPad to simplify critical tasks like inventory management, shipment tracking and client invoicing. At the App Store, you’ll find an iPad app that’s good-to-go for any business need. Streamline your tasks to save time and money.

iPad Business Communication: Attend or host remote meetings

With the iPad, you can take part in any business meeting. FaceTime simplifies video calls for sharing agendas and hosting online meetings.

iPad Apps for Business.

Here are some of the most popular iPad for business apps.

  • With iPad Pages you can create, edit and share reports, memos, emails and brochures.
  • View, edit and share Microsoft Office files such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint with Quickoffice Pro HD.
  • Pilots can use Jeppesen terminal charting data like airport diagrams and airway manual terminal procedures with Jeppesen Mobile TC.
  • Roambi Visualizer lets you get reports and graphs for your most vital business metrics.
  • SketchBook Pro lets you create sketches and drawings with brushes, tools and layering.
  • With Cisco WebEx Meetings, you can take part in online meetings as if you were in the same room.
  • Medical students and professionals can view the anatomy of the heart in a totally unique manner with Heart Pro.
  • mobilEcho gives you safe, managed access to corporate file servers. It encrypts data at rest with the data protection functionality of iOS 4.
  • Fuze Meeting HD lets you host online meetings from anywhere.
  • The Merck Manual Professional Edition gives healthcare professionals constant access to critical medical information.
  • With Dragon Dictation, you can dictate audio and add notes to SMS, email or other applications by using voice-to-text transcription.
  • Get instant views of your company’s performance and business metrics with QlikView.
  • AutoCAD WS enables viewing, editing and sharing of 3D CAD files in DWG format.

With so many apps and uses, it won’t be long before Apple iPads are as common in meetings as business suits. iPad productivity will continue to increase as more developers turn their eyes toward this new platform. The technology keeps improving, and the hardware gets more powerful with every year. It’s likely that soon the iPad will be indispensable for business applications.

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