20 More Essential Business Apps For Your Smartphone

About a year ago, I wrote a post featuring 30 essential business apps for the smartphone. It was a fun post to write — and, even better, I got a ton of new app recommendations from my ecosystem of smart friends. Given the fact that a lot happens in the mobile space in a year, it felt like it was high time to create a list of 25 more essential apps.

It’s worth noting that while this column is dedicated to helping marketers with their mobile and location-based marketing needs, marketers (and other business people) are also consumers of mobile technology.

And hell, if they can make their lives more efficient through the use of technology, that sounds like a win-win to me. Additionally, being a regular user of apps helps hone marketers’ instincts about what consumers are looking for in their online experiences.

For the sake of consistency, I mostly kept the same categories.  I did swap “Read It Later” out for “News,” and I also added a “Social” category (given the number of social media managers that need to update their social presences from anywhere).

Before I get to the apps, however, it is worth noting that Evernote (which was also on last year’s list) was suggested 19 times by different friends. Looks like that one’s got some serious legs!

Productivity Apps

• Knock – unlocks your Mac with two knocks on your iPhone (simple, but useful)
• JotNot Scanner Pro / TinyScan – scan multiple documents and convert into PDFs
• iMargin – calculates how much margin you are making on a sale
• TeamViewer – access, support and manage devices from anywhere at anytime
• Concur – expense reporting and travel booking
• Box – (not to be confused with Dropbox) save all your documents securely in the cloud
• Tinder – this one is a little tongue-in-cheek because it is a “matchmaking” app, but I’ve found it useful for professional purposes as working folks are hard pressed to find time to find dates (not to mention the fact that this is listed in the “productivity” category)
• Dark Sky – a new kind of weather app that gives you information right up to the minute
• Wrike – “Fast, easy, efficient project management software for Google Apps”
• Mynd – smart calendar and meeting scheduler, syncs with your LinkedIn to give you additional details on your upcoming meeting attendees

Travel Apps

• Taxi Magic – delivers on Uber’s original promise of summoning a cab from anywhere (vs. black cars/private cars)
• FlightTrack – elegant flight tracking app
• Hailo – the new Uber?

Internal Collaboration/Communication Apps

• Skype – hardly new, but now that it works without wifi and is pretty reliable, it’s worth mentioning
• WebEx /GoToMeeting – mobile versions of the good, old-fashioned web conferencing tools
• Slack – newfangled team communication tools
• Stitcher – streams radio and podcasts through your phone

Mapping/GPS Apps

• INRIX – industrial strength traffic data on your phone (also a client of WCG)

Mobile Payments/Wallet Apps

• Bank of America / American Express — with check scanning and mobile account management, these old-school financial institutions are upping their game with easy-to-use apps

Contact Management/Business Social Networks Apps

• Refresh – instant dossier of contacts that you met

News

• Flipboard – turn your social channels into a customized newspaper
• Feedly – magazine style news reader

Social Media

• Buffer – schedule updates/tweets for later
• Facebook Pages Manager – moderate your business’s Facebook page from anywhere

I had numerous other good recommendations, many of which we covered last year. There were also some that seemed good but didn’t quite make the cut. But don’t deny yourself… if you want to see the source for all these recommendations, check out my Facebook thread here.

Thanks to Chuck Hemann, Adam Cohen, Paul Mabray, Neal Rapoport, Mike Langford, John Refford, Kathy Keanini, Bob Blount, John Stack, Justin Levy, Scott Monty, Michael Troiano, Jeremy Pepper, Jennifer Kavanagh, Melanie Notkin, Jason Stoddard, Natanya Anderson, Susan Beebe, John Wall, Lou DiCello, Craig Alperowitz, Colleen Hartman, David Lord, Joselin Mane, Tanya Posavatz, Joselin Mane, Derek Overbey, Mark Wallace, Russ Somers, Shwen Gwee, Leslie Poston, Ben Foster, Michael Durwin, John Walsh, Kyle Flaherty, Marc Girolimetti, Anna OBrien, Allan Schoenberg, Kyle Lacy, David Thomas, Greg Matthews, Jim Storer, Meg Tripp, Kim Haynes Hollenshead, Mike Pascucci, James Loomstein, Jeff Shuey, Paul Dyer, Neenz Faleafine and for chiming in!

 (Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)