5 Types of Apps That Can Transform your Smartphone Into a Mobile Office

It's convenient to have a laptop -- you can do your business or finish a report wherever you are. But sometimes, carrying a laptop can still be a hassle and you know that things have to be done. It can be impractical to use a small screen to get the work done, but there are times when you don't have a choice. If you're an on-the-go professional, you need your smartphone to be more than a Facebook machine. Below are five app categories that will transform your smartphone into a work powerhouse.

Document conversion

If someone emails you a PDF file and you need to make some changes to it, it needs to be converted. In this case, you can depend on apps like PDF to Word, wherein it can pull from email, Dropbox, and Google Drive, and with just a few taps produces a .DOCX from PDF format.

Though you have to wait for about an hour unless you pay $5.99 for its premium version, which is not so bad especially if you're going to do a lot of PDF conversions. There are also other document conversion apps like the easyPDF (for Android and iOS), which can convert both ways.

Document editing

That .DOC file is no use for you if your smartphone doesn't have any word processing app installed. You can choose from any of these document editing apps: Microsoft Word (Android and iOS), Google Docs (Android and iOS), and Pages (iOS only).

Make sure you have a digital signing app installed on your smartphone as well. This is useful when you only need to sign a PDF file instead of converting and making edits to it, which is the purpose of the DocuSign (Android and iOS) app. You can sign and email documents straight from the app itself.

Cloud storage

Since we're living in a post-desktop computing era, most of us believe that storing documents directly in a computer is not a wise practice. That goes double for mobile devices, which are more likely to disappear than a desktop computer.

Cloud storage is a must for anyone doing work on a mobile device. The most commonly used are Google Drive (iOS and Android) and Dropbox (iOS and Android), but there are also other apps that you can also try. See to it that whatever document you are working on are synced to the cloud so that you'll still have a copy even if your phone dies, gets stolen, or breaks.

Business management

Operating your own business, or you're small part of one, doesn't mean you have to be tethered to a desk anymore. Many applications that are used to manage businesses have a cloud-based component, which means you can use them wherever you happen to be -- it's up to you whether that's a good thing or not.

Platforms such as Salesforce have mobile apps for iOS and Android that reportedly feature all the same content as their desktop apps. There are also various PM platforms that also have mobile apps: Trello (iOS,Android), Asana (iOS, Android), and Basecamp 3 (iOS, Android) all have on-the-go options available.

Communication

Sending emails and texts is not enough when it comes to business communication. There are times when you need to make a face-to-face call on Skype (iOS, Android) or a quick group conversation in Slack (iOS,Android).

Now, if you're taking a lot of business calls on your personal phone, you may want to consider using a secondary number, like those provided by Google Voice (iOS, Android) or Citrix Convoi (iOS). You can give your number out to clients or colleagues and you'll never have to worry about getting called on your personal one anymore.

You can also get eFax (iOS, Android), an mobile app that allows you to send and receive faxes. While most of the world has moved on to digital documents, there are still some hardcore faxes out there who still prefer doing business the traditional way. In that case, you don't have to scramble looking for a FedEx or UPS Store since you can do it directly from your smartphone.