Today, how we work is changing. An increasing number of people are working from home and running their business outside of their office. In theory, all you need is a working phone line and a steady internet connection. However, there are still unique challenges.

For example, how do you collaborate with your team when you are all working in different locations, and perhaps work globally? Another thing is-- how do you build personal relationships with your customers when you may never meet in person?

For those remote workers and business owners, here are 5 of the rising star tools that will optimize remote work. And you never know, these tools may become an established tool that you use every day!

1) Zoom

Zoom is primarily a conferencing tool, but it also has a variety of other uses. Among the many applications of Zoom is for a company webinar or live product demonstration. The advantage of this tool is it instantly creates a personal human connection, as the host and participants in a meeting can see each other's facial expressions; it is as close to having a face-face conversation without being in the same room!

It's easy to use too, all you need to do- is send out a link to your team or your customers (up to 100 people can participate). You can also share a presentation with your team or your customers and you can record your call, alleviating the burden of taking notes.

Zoom also facilitates collaboration, enabling you to work on the same project with people from different departments, or who live in different regions.

The upward trend of video conferencing platforms

The number of businesses using video conferencing platforms continues to rise: according to scheduling platform X.ai, the use of video conferencing platforms continues to grow, especially in light of recent times.

They found that 69.13% of their customers used x.ai to book video meetings on Zoom. With 24.83% of their customers' scheduling meetings on Google Hangouts, and the remaining 6.04% using WebEx and Microsoft Teams.

2) GSuite

GSuite is accessible to anyone with a Google email account. You may even have your email account open now, which is just one component of many. This tool enables your team to share and collaborate on documents in real-time with Google Docs; similarly, you can share spreadsheets, and work together with a team member to create a PowerPoint Presentation to dazzle your customers.

GSuite allows you to book meetings with team members or customers. With just a click of a button, they can see your availability for meetings or video calls. “You can even pull dates and times directly from your email, so you never forget a thing”.

3) Instagantt

As one of the millions, working at home, one of the challenges for me is scheduling. Instagantt is a powerful tool that helps manage your projects away from the office. This tool enables you to visually plan, manage, and schedule your projects.

Instagantt gives you 100% control in organizing your entire workflow, but it also has other great features. Something everybody feels-when they are away from the office-is isolation. Using Instagantt solves this by enabling you to communicate and collaborate with others on your team.

If you are working on the same project, or you are managing a group of people, you can create tasks and sub-tasks; while monitoring how each team member is managing their workload. Among the most important uses of this tool is it can track more meaningful project-related information- your project deadlines, risks, priorities, and estimated hours and costs.

4) 10to8 Scheduling

For individuals working remotely, 10to8 is a great tool to stay in touch with your team members; this tool enables you to manage recurring meetings every day, week, or month, and make ad-hoc phone calls at convenient times that suit all of your team.

Even if your team works across different time zones, 10to8 allows you to check their calendars for available times when they have an empty time slot. 10to8 also fully integrates with Zoom so you can hop on to a video call any time-by clicking on a link in your diary.

5) Time Doctor

Time Doctor is an employee time tracking platform that can optimize your productivity and you teams productivity; you can use this tool for client billing purposes too. This tool comes in use when employing freelancers to work on a project, Time Doctor shows you when they started on a particular project and when they logged out.

80% of Time Doctor's features are to help individual team members manage their time better, with 20% features used to monitor how team members spend their time. The advantage of this tool is it provides business owners and their management team high-level insights on how their organization spends its time so they can improve the efficiency of their business.

The Remote Working Revolution

Today, there is more reliance on remote tools with more people working at home than ever before. In these technologically advanced times, and more tools accessible and free, there may come a time where the virtual office replaces the brick and mortar office.

Technology and innovation have also made it possible for people in different parts of the world to work on the same project almost simultaneously. Tools such as Zoom enable up to 100 team members to meet, work together, and present different perspectives-Zoom also helps customers-who may live on the other side of the world- view product demos and webinars.