digital calendars

What does the business world look like without Calendar software? Think meetings impossible to coordinate, errors in meeting invitations for a client, and employees double-booked for opening and closing shifts. There is no room for inferior calendar operations in your office, nowadays.

Any calendar is better than nothing but having a procedure in place that is a manual system isn’t ideal by any stretch of the imagination. Managers lose 20% of their time scheduling things by hand. Manual scheduling or a lousy calendar system is money thrown out the window.

A digital calendar doesn’t just save money — it could save your life. Seriously — stress, heart attack and more. Here are eight other reasons to deploy a digital Calendar software:

1. Boost agility.

Imagine you arrange to meet a project’s stakeholders at a local coffee shop. But at the last minute, you learn the coffee shop is closed.

What do you do? Without a digital calendar, you’d be fumbling with your phone trying to call everyone. Hopefully, you can get the word out fast enough.

If you made that appointment on a digital calendar, you could make changes and notify people immediately. Assuming they’ve downloaded the app, the new address is pushed out to their smartphone.

2. Engage large groups.

Events with a dozen or more people are tough to manage. You have to find a time and a place that works for everyone. To make sure the meeting runs as it should, you have to get an agenda out ahead of time.

With large groups, it’s important to keep your calendar availability up to date. When working with large groups:

  • Ensure all other meetings are on your calendar.
  • Maintain a five-minute buffer in case meetings run over.
  • Make “never ever” hours the same each day.
  • Sync your personal and professional calendars.

3. Simplify recurring events.

When you have meetings that repeat themselves, it can get messy. With calendar software, you can set up a recurring appointment with ease. No more last-minute calls to the team about the monthly updates. A repeating appointment automatically fills in the rest of the week, month, or year on the calendar.

4. Increase productivity.

Have you ever felt distracted at work? Calendar software can help you carve out time for yourself for deep work. Schedule focus time into your calendar. Pair it with a tool like Clockify to track your productivity.

Together, calendar and time management tools allow you to manage all your goals in one place. Be deliberate: Decide each morning which you’re going to work on that day. Use this combination to:

  • Bill hours accurately.
  • Review how you spend your time.
  • Hold yourself accountable.
  • Optimize your schedule.
  • Remind you when you get off-task.
  • Remember to take breaks.

5. Streamline processes.

A digital calendar is a great tool for streamlining your business processes. Every minute and task at work must be managed efficiently.

Take onboarding. You might block off one hour for email outreach, another for interviews, and a third for resume review. By switching contexts infrequently, you minimize the time costs of changing to a different mode of thinking.

Sales is another domain where calendar software is critical. Think about what time of day when you’re most productive: If you’re behind on proposals, you might block that time off to draft new documents. If it’s meetings you need to make time for, perhaps your afternoons are all about chatting with leads.

6. Avoid confusion.

It’s incredibly easy to make a meeting mistake. If you use an Excel spreadsheet as your calendar, mixing up the start and end times is a matter of clicking on the wrong box. If you try to manage it all via email, you could easily forget that you scheduled something. Letting employees tell you when they want to meet is a recipe for a lot of double bookings.

7. Make time for downtime.

Work time must be used well, but that doesn’t mean there’s no time for fun. In fact, having fun together is important for cohesive company culture.

Because there’s always more work to do, it’s tough to make time for team bonding unless you schedule it. And because most companies qualify as large groups, it’s important that schedulers can see everyone else’s availability.

Conclusion

Calendar software makes work, recreation, and everything in between easier. Meetings are easier to manage, and there’s no need to send a thousand emails to find a time that works for everyone. No wonder digital calendars have become the default.