Running a business is a big deal. An entrepreneur has to handle and oversee a lot of tasks—from recruiting and managing employees to content creation, finance, bookkeeping, customer service, etc. Overseeing this broad spectrum of tasks can be overwhelming. Thus, business owners must learn how to leverage technology to automate and simplify tasks.
Depending on the activities a business conducts, the stage it is in, its growth rate, and the number of employees it has, it will need a unique combination of technological tools, either free or paid, to help with the following:
PRODUCTIVITY
To ensure productivity, a business must be able to achieve synergy and effective management of all employees or independent contractors. A business should seek out project and task management tools as well as time-tracking tools. These are especially important if a business operates with one or more remote workers. Some recommended tools include:
Asana: The Asana app is a project management tool that keeps members updated and focused on changes and developments in a project. It helps assign tasks to team members that are visible to everyone, create notes, set deadlines, and monitor work in progress and completed tasks. It is a free app with an option to upgrade to a paid version.
Trello: This is also a free project management tool with robust features and an option to upgrade to a premium plan. You can customize the app to track deadlines, share files, and seamlessly collaborate with team members working on a project or task.
TimeDoctor: This is an easy solution for tracking employees’ hours. TimeDoctor is great for time reporting and monitoring to boost productivity.
Toggl: This is a great choice for businesses looking for a way to track the hours of remote employees. It provides flexible, cloud-based time-tracking software for individuals and businesses. It helps determine how many hours employees are spending on specific tasks.
BOOKKEEPING AND ACCOUNTING
To make life easier and more convenient, use technology to automate and keep records of your financials, from sales to expenses, losses, and profits. The apps available for this include:
Expensify: This helps take the stress out of expense tracking and reporting as it tracks employees’ work-related expenses.
Wave: This is a comprehensive accounting app that can house all of a business’s financial and accounting information. It has invoicing and expense-tracking systems. It has a free version that can be upgraded for more in-depth financial tracking and professional bookkeeping services.
QuickBooks Online: This is an easy-to-use software for small businesses. It allows users to create custom, professional invoices, sales receipts, and estimates. You can also track your income and expenses and invite your accountant or bookkeeper to collaborate on your books. The pricing plan ranges from $8–$17 per month (about ₦3,850–₦8,160).
FreshBooks: This accounting software is built for freelancers, self-employed professionals, businesses with employees, or contractors. It helps with easy invoicing, organizing and tracking expenses, time-tracking for employees to calculate wages, collaborating on projects, getting paid, preparing financial reports, and performing double-entry accounting.
MARKETING
Business owners need an application that can help organize and monitor their sales pipeline, from leads to prospects to deals. Tools are needed depending on the type(s) of marketing a business uses, such as email, affiliate, or social media marketing. These tools include:
Keap: This is an end-to-end automation tool that helps grow sales, streamline marketing processes, convert leads into clients, and manage customer relationships (CRM).
Mailchimp: This helps businesses automate their email marketing campaigns and keep their customers updated. It also features email campaign management tools for timed delivery, email list segmentation, and more.
PixxFly: This is an easy-to-use outbound marketing application that allows users to manage content distribution, syndication, and multi-channel marketing.
Pipedrive: This tool helps manage leads and deals and track communications with prospective customers and clients. It provides a visual sales pipeline that helps prompt action, remain organized, and stay in control of the complex sales process.
ANALYTICS
Analyzing data is an essential part of running a business and helps in making meaningful decisions. Tools available for this include:
Google Analytics: This helps measure advertising ROI and track website traffic.
Hootsuite: This helps users track all social media engagement and search engine traffic in a single place. Business owners can use it to track mentions of their brands, schedule social media publications, analyze website traffic, and much more.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Managing customer relationships, dealing with complaints, and receiving customer feedback are pivotal parts of a business. The tools that can be used include:
SurveyMonkey: This can be used to create surveys to measure user engagement and gather customer feedback on your product, pricing, or recommendations.
Zendesk: This is a customer relationship management tool designed to improve customer relationships. With Zendesk, your customers can reach out through chats, tickets, emails, phone, help centers, or communities.
CONTENT CREATION AND DESIGN
Canva: This is an app full of various templates that can be used to create visual content easily. It is an easy-to-use tool for creating designs and videos for business promotion and advertising.
HUMAN RESOURCES
BambooHR: This is an HR software that offers top-notch tools to analyze employee data, hire talent, onboard new employees, and manage compensation.
CLOUD STORAGE
Instead of saving multiple versions of the same documents on a desktop, business owners should use cloud storage services to synchronize all files and documents so they are easily accessible to anyone, anywhere. Applications that can be used: Google Drive (Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Google Slides), Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox.
COLLABORATION AND COMMUNICATION
To ensure a smooth flow of information and create a virtual office space, especially if employees are distributed across various locations, a business can use tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.
Which of these tools do you use? And which ones do you think are missing from the list? Let us know in the comments section.
