A look at a business expert’s smartphone

In the “Homescreen!” series, we present the homescreens of people from the social media, marketing, media and tech industries – including app recommendations and tips for everything from to-do lists to small games for in-between times. Today: Barbara Stadler, Head of Business Development at Varycon.

Barbara Stadler: First of all, an important note: I no longer differentiate between a private smartphone and one used for work, even if I had the opportunity to do so. I have my really business-relevant apps that I use every day on my private smartphone, which – unlike many of my colleagues – is an Android device.

Some will probably have concerns about work-life balance at this point, but for me, having everything on one device as a single point of truth has proven to be the best way to do it in years – just like with our content creation platform Varycon. When I’m on vacation or after work, I also have the option of muting apps and notifications.

Barbara Stadler: These are my most important apps

At Varycon I work in the role of Head of Business Development. For me, this means much more than the classic job description usually defines. I take care of the expansion of our business holistically. This also includes keeping the teams busy, providing them with tasks and content to complete the tasks, and monitoring product development.

So I’m close to the team as well as our customers and I watch how the market develops and what trends and problems are being discussed. The most important apps for my work on my home screen are the following: The complete Google Suite, primarily Google Drive (for Android), Google Chat and Gmail (for Android), as well as our project and team management tool Asana (for Android).

We use Google Chat (for Android) within the team, but also to exchange ideas with external partners. It is the easiest and fastest method to find out about the current status and exchange information, which is then stored directly in our Varycon Google Drive. Google Drive is our cloud storage where we manage all customer project content and also store content for our sales and marketing activities.

News and project management

We use Asana to manage individual projects, as well as provide insight into our team’s workload. After testing various project management tools, we stuck with Asana and overall are very happy with it. Here we work on our customer projects as well as our marketing and sales measures, which are also defined like projects.

There are also the backlogs of our artists and developers to provide an overview of all tasks per resource in the team. In addition to the ntv app (for Android), my news apps also include LinkedIn (for Android). Even if, in my opinion, the platform is sometimes used too much for personal or off-work topics, for me it is still a good source for what marketers, brand managers, sales teams and brands and companies in general just moved and busy trying to understand.

Music and podcasts

This way I stay up to date on what problems or challenges they are currently facing and can work with our team on solutions. Otherwise, I have subscribed to the newsletters from OMR, Horizont, CIO and SDRs of Germany for daily industry news, which, however, end up in my email inbox and I can then access the articles and websites from them via the browser on my laptop check.

When I’m looking for news on my mobile, I often use the Google search function as a widget – but on the second screen of my Android smartphone so that I don’t have too many apps on the home screen.

To get in the mood for work and switch off after work, I like to use the Spotify app (for Android) to listen to music or industry or entertainment podcasts. And if I just want to relax after work but still want to challenge myself, then I like to open the Tetris app (for Android) – and then ideally crack the next high score.

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