Item: Evernote
Rating: 10
Author: Dave Luczak

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have been using Evernote for over three years as an aid for organizing my personal life as well as various projects, activities and hobbies I'm involved with. When I recently began my current employment, one of my agenda items was to create a company manual. Wanting something that would be more useful than the typical policy manual handed to new employees, I was on the hunt for something a little more dynamic. I asked members of the Google+ Productivity Community I belong to for any suggestions and someone said her company uses Evernote. Having used it personally as long as I have, I knew it was the solution I was looking for.

Pros and Cons

Ubiquity. Evernote is everywhere. It's a native application on your Mac or PC, it resides on the web with access from any computer with web access, and it has great apps for tablets and smart phones.
Easy Capture. If you do any kind of research for work or personal, there are Evernote web clipper apps for all current browsers. Capturing a website or article is as easy as clicking a button on your browser's toolbar. And it's smart too, it usually knows what folder your selection should go in to based on contextual information. A related web clipper called "Clearly" will convert any web page into an article format, where you can use a highlighter before you save it to an Evernote folder. You can have the article read out loud to you as well. You also get a "secret" Evernote email address. Forwarding an email to this address places the email in an Evernote folder of your choosing.
The ability to share folders. I once created a folder for an associate who left town for an extended period. I scanned important documents and mail for this individual several times per week. They would check the folder through their web browser every few days and make notations or print what they needed. Much simpler than emailing.
Indexing. I currently have over 2,800 notes and over 50 folders in my personal Evernote account. Every note that's added can have "tags". Every note will go into a folder. My "home" folder is called "Inbox". If I'm not sure where to put something, it will go in "Inbox" until I decide where it belongs or I create a new folder for it. Also, when you pay for a premium account, everything gets OCR'd (optical character recognition) including photos. This makes finding things you've put into Evernote very easy and efficient.

Learning curve. I have introduced many people to Evernote as I believe in it's utility and feel it is share-worthy. In my experience, very few whom I have shown it to actually have taken to it and use it on a regular basis. The tablet and smart phone apps used to be very un-intuitive and a little on the clunky side. I have seen improvement in the years I have been using the mobile apps and I expect that to continue. At the end of the day, it's a new service that needs some time and attention to understand how to use.

Return on Investment

In my current business use of Evernote as a dynamic company manual, it has helped me create a textually rich, highly organized compendium of company processes and structures. This has met my need to have easier onboarding of new hires as well as a go-to source and how-to manual on everything from how to use the phone system to the special requirements of specific customers.

Alternatives Considered

I have used Box, which I really like, but it doesn't really stack up or compare very well to Evernote. Box is great for online storage and sharing large files and documents that are too big to email. It is not as ubiquitous as Evernote, nor as feature rich or user friendly.

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel that Evernote is an excellent place to collect and store information that requires easy access and retrieval. Taking that as a baseline, you can go in multiple directions and use it in any number of ways.

I've seen it used by people in outside sales as a way to organize their customers and accounts. Taking that a step further, an Evernote user can take a photo or record an audio clip or jot down some text from within a particular customer's folder either during or right after the sales call. This could be useful if the folder was shared with an assistant back at the office. Evernote also has a camera feature that will take a photo of a business card and add the contact information to a note, as well as the card image. Likewise with Post-It Notes.

Evernote would be useful for team collaboration, especially if the team was in remote locations and using shared folders. A note could be started by the project lead, and the collaborators could all work on the same note, adding pictures and documents as needed.

I've heard of bloggers and website admins who have any contact submissions made on their website/blog automatically emailed to a folder in their Evernote account. These emails are automatically organized in a folder to be dealt with by them or someone they share the folder with.

Likelihood to Renew

I don't see myself ever not using Evernote, except of course if it goes away. It's just too useful, effective and easy to use.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Evernote, Your Second Brain

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Evernote