Technology has taken over the world, and this means a lot of tasks are accomplished every day in a faster, more efficient manner. However, this also means that those working in offshoring companies must be especially trained and skilled in the latest administrative applications. Here are some of the software musts that you need use to sharpen your team’s efficiency.

• Email applications/software

When it comes to email applications or software, the go-to for most companies will always be Microsoft Outlook. Thus, your team of virtual assistants should familiarize themselves with the workings of this application to keep up with company mail.

Gmail is also another application most companies have taken advantage of due to its great range of features. Another advantage of this app is that pretty much like other applications from Google, Gmail is free.

Slack is an up-and-coming email app that has acquired nods among companies—it merges email functions with real-time chat features.

• Scheduling applications

A good deal of companies still prefer the reliability of Microsoft Outlook, so aspiring virtual assistants should master it. Google Calendar is also another application which lots of companies utilize in order to keep their staff’s activities in check, plus it’s free which is great news for smaller companies and firms who want to cut costs.

• Spreadsheet software

Spreadsheets are tools used to make reports or keep track of important work data. To this day, most companies favour the functionality of Microsoft Excel. If you want something gratis but highly dependable for your team, Google Sheets is for you—it has the same functions as Microsoft Excel.

• Word-processing software/applications

Document-creation applications allow users to produce, review and edit text files. Get your team to accomplish writing tasks by providing Microsoft Word for them. Then again, there are also free alternatives; for one, you can consider Apache OpenOffice, which works the same way as Word. You can also try looking up applications like WPS Office Free, LibreOffice or simply Google Docs.

• Presentation software

At times, you need your team to present a report. One helpful program for this is Microsoft’s PowerPoint. The SlideShare from LinkedIn is also fast becoming one of the good alternatives for the Microsoft product.

• Productivity software

You want your team to be productive and organised, so teach them how to make use of applications like the Time Doctor, which is a time-tracking software that provides screenshots of employees’ activities, Evernote (lets users take notes and maintain an activity list), Asana (lets users keep track of activity lists and group projects) and DropBox (allows users to access files from just about any point in the world.

• Design/video software

Assign design and video-editing tasks to your team by providing them with programs that will help make their tasks a breeze to accomplish. Adobe is still the gold standard when it comes to design and video-editing software—Photoshop and Illustration are excellent for editing images and creating flyers and invitations while Premiere makes for a great video editor.

• Digital publishing software

For PDF files, make sure your team is provided with Adobe Acrobat or Nitro Pro. A budget-friendly alternative would have to be pdfforge’s PDF Architect 6 Professional.