Cloud-based, paperless workflows are the future of office efficiency, while poorly indexed, illegible files are stuck firmly in the pre-SaaS era, where they belong. HR professionals take on a ton of different responsibilities throughout the day and deal with plenty of repetitive, complex tasks.

Relying on your own brain (as much as you’d want to think you can) and bits of paper stuck to your monitor just isn’t the way to get things done. Some businesses are still a little slow on the uptake, but it’s obvious that what we need is a smart, foolproof solution that is immune to the silly mistakes we’re so prone to making. That solution is software-as a-service (SaaS).

Let’s take a look at:

• Top 23 HR tools
• Benefits of using HR tools
• Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS)
• Key features of HR tools
• How to choose an HR tool

The beginning of the 20th Century marks the dawn of the Information Age. This is characterized by a rapid shift from an industrial economy to one that has become primarily based on information technology. It is from within this new digital era, that technological applications (apps) have come about.

The total number of app downloads in 2018 was 194 billion. Clearly there is a large consumer base – the app user – that needs to be catered for. The question is, how do you know if you are meeting the needs of your app users?

In this article, we at Process Street will explain how the app metric, ARPDAU  can be used to optimize your app for success. This article has been structured as below:

• App metrics: What are they and why are they needed
• ARPDAU: What it is, how to calculate it and why it is important
• ARPU: What it is, how it is calculated and why it is important
• ARPU vs ARPDAU
• ARPU vs ARPDAU: How to improve ARPU and ARPDAU values
• How you can use Process Street to increase your ARPU and ARPDAU metrics

Let’s get started.
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You click the ‘Contact Us’ page. Nothing happens. First, confusion, then familiar frustration. It was a mailto link. Your computer slows to a grinding halt as a huge, archaic desktop mail app rises from the depths of your hard drive. Checking that the date on your computer isn’t 15 years out, you wonder why mail integration isn’t standard… and what year is it exactly?

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We’re a big fan of cloud services on this blog, and Vinay has written on Process Street about Dropbox vs Google Drive in the past as well as a great guide on how to migrate to the cloud.

If you’re wondering how to host a website on Google Drive for free, well, I just did (and it took me 2 minutes!) so I’ll tell you all about it.

Even though the new Google Drive has made it harder to host websites, there’s still a pretty easy workaround I came across. It comes in the form of a Google Script written by an expert in the field, Amit Agarwal. First I’ll show you this way — the easy way — then I’ll explain how you can do it without the script.

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While writing a recent article for TechCrunch about empty states in app design, I came across Inbox by Gmail — the app which rewards you with a sunny sky when you hit inbox zero.

Inbox vs Gmail: The Full Comparison

I’m probably a little late to the party, and as much as I love Gmail I feel that Inbox is a smarter and more intuitive way to process a bulging inbox.

Vinay covered why task snoozing is so powerful over on his Abstract Living blog, which made me want to try an app with the same mechanics.

If you’re anything like me and have these traits, you’re probably going to get a lot out of Inbox:

1. Around 5% of your emails warrant a reply
2. Less than 10% of your emails get opened
3. You forget to create tasks in your to-do list from emails
4. You spend too long hitting inbox zero (the very definition of ‘busy work’)
5. You find it hard to separate useful emails from trash with your current app
6. You need reminding often before you start working on a task
7. You want to see a blue, sunny sky pop up when you clear your inbox.
8. You like good things

Delightful, right?! It looks even better on the iPhone because it animates slightly. After 20 minutes of looking for a way to record my iPhone’s screen and buying some junk app which doesn’t actually do it, I’ll leave that to your imagination.

If you want more content on Google products, see the posts Google Drive Tips and Dropbox vs Google Drive.

But first, getting back on track: here’s Inbox vs Gmail (The Showdown).

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It’s thought that a high-touch approach to customer success does not scale.

Here are the common objections:

• There aren’t enough hours in the day to personally oversee 10,000 users.
• Even if there were enough hours in the day, there aren’t enough of us to do it and still be profitable.
• Even if there were enough of us, there’d be no way to keep track of it all effectively.

Zapier, a SaaS middleman for app integration, thinks differently.

The idea is simple: connect your SaaS app to Zapier, and Zapier will connect it to over 1,000 apps. The formula is one programmers will be intimately familiar with since it’s basically an if/then statement. For example: if a user submits a Zendesk ticket, then post the ticket to a Slack channel.

Apps can create actions and triggers, controlling each other and automating frustrating admin work behind the scenes so you don’t have to bother with it.

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You need a solid writing app.

It’s vital for practically every kind of company—whether it’s for drafting contracts, writing up website content, or just putting together internal documentation.

But team collaboration can easily become a huge nuisance.

The more people involved, the more difficult it can be to decide on the right edits and produce a coherent piece. That means the last thing you want is even more trouble dealing with a collaboration tool that doesn’t fit your workflow.

We delved into the features of three popular collaborative writing apps—Quip, Microsoft Word, and Google Docs—to help you decide upon which is best for your team.

In this post, we’re going to compare each app’s features in the fields of:

• Sharing
• Concurrent editing
• Revision history
• Chatting and commenting
• Organization

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I’ve had something of a battle with to-do list apps recently which has shown me that it’s as much about the app as it is about the way you interact with it.

Your productivity really depends on the environment you manage your tasks in and the way your tasks are presented to you. With this in mind, I’m going to look at three options I’ve tested against each other over the past few months and report on what I’ve learned, both from the perspective of the features and from the perspective of the psychology of productivity. So, it’s Todoist vs. Wunderlist vs. Any.Do.

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[ Download our Free Ebook ] – Click here to download our free 111 page ebook on “How to automate the tasks you hate at work using Zapier“.

The Essential Secrets of Automation Software

Last week, we treated you to the first post in our Zapier series. “What is Zapier?“ covered the basics, but in this post we are going to go deeper into the advanced workings of the most useful automation software to have ever graced your computer screen.

If you still haven’t tried out Zapier yet, don’t sweat it! Considering how long it takes myself to come around to the idea of new technology (Windows 8 was a true shock to the system), you can’t be blamed for not going all-out straight away. So, to put any remaining doubts at rest, allow us to prove why Zapier truly is your dream automation software.

‘I wasn’t really sure what Zapier was for until I started digging around in the web application. Eventually I was able to come up with ideas to problems I didn’t even know I had.’ – Matthew W., Product Manager at SafetySync

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The following is a guest post by Brent Schiffman, the marketing manager for ProjectManager.com.

Are you a developer, SCRUM Master, QA Engineer, Project Manager, or a manager of any sort?

You might have the problem I had before I found a solution to:

• Stop tracking the same information in multiple apps
• Stop transferring data manually between your apps
• Connect your favorite apps together to form… some kind of super app.

If you can’t manage your projects, to-do lists or general planning and productivity with any single app, I’m about to give you some great news.

And that great news is… the existence of Zapier.

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