If you were listening during today’s announcement, as a business owner you might have cringed slightly. Another gadget to distract employees? Or perhaps this could be something to help innovate your business. Since we’ve been discussing user efficiency heavily in recent articles, I thought it might be interesting to discuss how we see the Apple Watch impacting productivity within business. You may be surpised but we think Apple Watch could be a huge boon to efficiency. Here are just a few ways that we see the Apple Watch improving employee productivity within your organization.
Viewing, sorting and responding to e-mail.
Perhaps one of the most productive features of the Apple Watch is a feature called Glances. This allows you to get a snapshot of weather, calendar, and e-mail. Using the touch interface and crown, you can easily interact, mark unread, flag, delete and respond to e-mail without having to pull your iPhone out of your pocket. This allows your employees to have ready-access to e-mail in the event that they are unavailable and need to be reached while on the road or in a meeting. Dictation allows them to quickly flag, delete, mark unread or respond to e-mails with their voice.
Calendar Management.
Another great feature of Apple Watch is that it allows you to view and manage your calendar directly from the interface. You can set the home screen to show your next meeting, so that employees that are regularly late or aren’t viewing their calendar have their schedule directly in front of them at all times. You can also use Siri to set reminders for meetings and create new calendar events. While Siri hasn’t gained significant use on iPhones, we think that Apple Watch will bring people around to getting used to her.
Quick interactions with Business Applications.
Your employees use business applications to stay in touch with company and sales data. Salesforce is a great example of a company that embraced WatchKit development by creating an Apple Watch friendly application. Users can view their business (sales, service or marketing) analytics directly from their Apple Watch, giving them real-time glances of the most important information required to fulfill their job functions.
Ease of Business Travel & Navigation.
Anything that can make business travel more simple and efficient is always a good thing. Apple Watch allows users to gather their boarding pass information directly from Apple Watch and scan it at the security gate. While you’ll likely have to put your watch through the scanner afterwards, having less to worry about and carry through security is always an added convenience. Additionally, you’ll be able to easily navigate and speak to Siri directly without pushing buttons, making road navigation simple and safe for your employees that are on the road.
When it comes to technology, it’s important that you embrace new technologies that employees will be utilizing in order to improve the overall efficiency of your organization. Rather than seeing these as a hamper on productivity, use the applications and features to your advantage in order to make your employees more efficient and improve their level of satisfaction.
