When App Overload Kills Your Productivity

We’re living in an app-for-everything kind of world. Not only do copious amounts of apps seep into our personal lives as consumers, they also seep into our workplace lives as professionals tasked to get a job done. Whether you are conscious of it or not, you likely have app overload fatigue and it’s killing your focus, patience, and workflow. Since using Glances is all about helping business teams reduce app overwhelm and increase efficiency, we’ll cover the industry research behind why having too many good apps often adds up to being a bad thing for your daily productivity.

There’s an app for that…and this…and that too.

Let’s start with how much the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry has grown in merely the last decade. During simpler times in 2011, Scott Brinker of chiefmartech.com recorded a modest 150 platforms available that fit the marketing technology category. Back then, you would be lucky if you worked for a forward-thinking company that was open to adopting one or two of these novel technologies. Fast forward to recent times, Brinker reported an incredible 8,000 solutions available in the 2020 Marketing Technology Landscape. All of this adds up to 5,233% growth for these applications in just 9 years! See the year-by-year growth chart below.

Image courtesy chiefmartech.com

Toggling multiple apps can waste 32 days per year, research shows.

As more SaaS apps and platforms have been launched to help professionals in sales, marketing, support, accounting, customer service, and more, we are seeing an increase in industry research related to workplace app usage and its often-negative effect on not only user productivity, but on business revenue as well.

One recent report by cloud-based communications giant RingCentral proves that app fatigue is real for employees using multiple apps that are well-intended to streamline tasks. Based on their worldwide survey of 2,000 knowledge workers, below are some of the eye-opening statistics the report produced:

• 69% of workers waste up to 32 days per year navigating workplace apps
• 68% percent of workers toggle between apps up to 10 times an hour, and 31% of workers said toggling causes them to lose their train of thought
• Workers find navigating between apps more annoying than doing household chores (53%), paying bills (52%), and trying to lose weight (50%)
• Workers believe a unified platform would help them achieve a better workflow (67%), be more productive at work (65%), and help work feel less chaotic (62%)
• Despite the prevailing feeling of app overload, workers find team messaging to be the least disruptive to their workday

Infographic courtesy ringcentral.com, From App Overload to Workplace Zen

67% of workers believe a unified platform would help them achieve a better workflow.

This is where the unifying powers of the Glances no-code integration platform work beautifully. Glances securely connects all of your apps and provides a simplified view of the data you need right when you need it, in real time. Having to manage a variety of platforms and apps to get your job done is unfortunately not going to change, but using Glances can make this once painful experience more fluid and efficient. There are also other awesome benefits like the ability to share your glances with teammates, and save time and money for your company.

Workers find team messaging to be the least disruptive to their workday.

One of the most functional features of Glances is, it works via browser, desktop app, or mobile.

Glances is ready to help you overcome app overload.

Schedule a demo to see the awesome benefits of Glances in action or ask our team questions.

If you need to connect a specific app with Glances that is not currently available on glances.com, please send your app requests to hello@glances.com.

Find more step-by-step articles with the latest information on our support site.

Source: RingCentral, Inc. 2018 research report “From Workplace Chaos to Zen: How App Overload Is Reshaping the Digital Workplace”