Between financial management, hiring the right staff, securing funding, marketing, and developing customer loyalty, running your own business can be challenging. Fortunately, there are various technological tools you could leverage to streamline your business operations. Read on for 10 essential tools every business should invest in this year to save time and money and reduce stress.
1. Task management software
Keeping track of tasks is relatively easy when starting your business, as you handle all processes by yourself. However, this becomes difficult when you hire more employees and your business grows. Consider investing in task management software to divide business tasks and assign responsibilities evenly among your staff. This also allows you to determine the progress of these tasks in real-time, so you do not have to worry about calling your team to check whether or not a job has been completed. This streamlines business processes allowing you to check tasks off your list. Some excellent task management tools you could invest in include Trello, Basecamp, Paymo, and GoodDay.
2. Communication software
Effective internal and external communication is the heart of every business organization. It creates a culture of trust and teamwork, mitigates workplace conflicts, boosts productivity, and improves customer relations. To maximize your company’s communication efficiency, you should consider investing in communication software. These tools enable your employees to collaborate and interact effectively on business projects. They also allow you to engage your clients and staff regardless of their geographical location. When effectively managed, communication tools enable your business to remain efficient and organized and allow a seamless flow of relevant information to your client base.
Enterprises can invest in CPaaS solutions to enable communication features like instant messaging, teleconferencing and video, and voice to ensure direct and authentic business interactions via mobile phone. Some benefits of CPaaS include improved customer experience, reduced costs as your company does not have to set up its infrastructure, and an additional layer of security to business communications.
3. Smart hiring software
Hiring the right people for your business projects is crucial to achieving your bottom line. You should perform a background, credit, and reference check on all applicants to ensure that the new employee does not become a liability to your business. This is often time-consuming, leads to high employee turnover, and is costly, especially when you hire a recruitment consultancy agency to handle the process. Consider investing in intelligent hiring software to streamline your company’s recruitment process.
Tools such as Zoho and GoodHire enable you to find the best fit employee for your company by verifying degrees, performing background checks, reviewing resumes, and screening credit reports. Be sure to choose a user-centric intelligent hiring software optimized for mobile to enable you to recruit and hire employees quickly and efficiently and without paperwork.
4. Website building software
Having a well-designed website is crucial to establishing your business’ presence online, allowing your target customers to find you easily. However, developing a feature-rich website is complicated and requires expertise in distinct areas and IT skills, which can be costly to acquire. Consider investing in a website-building software application to enable you to design an attractive and professional site to avoid the hassle of hiring a web designer.
These tools allow you to edit and create clear and engaging web pages for your site and build a quality web design that enables you to stand out from the competition. Website building tools such as Squarespace and WordPress provide thousands of visually versatile and professional templates and personalized plugin options that can help you create sleek and unique web pages for your brand.
5. Social media management tool
Establishing an online presence entails having a professional business website. You should also strive to create a solid social media presence. With over 4.62 billion people on social media today, you should not limit your business to a single social network. To reach a wider client base, you need to be active on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Tumblr.
Managing your business accounts on different social platforms is, however, overwhelming. It can be time-consuming to access a particular platform, maintain it, then do the same for all other platforms. You may end up losing your brand consistency or neglect some accounts, so you should consider investing in social media management software.
Social media management tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Loomly enable aggregating and scheduling of social media posts for all social pages from a single platform. They also promote consistency across business social media accounts since you see all pages on a single platform. A social media management software can enable you to manage Facebook ads and Google ads, among other retargeting tools, to boost the efficiency of your social media marketing.
6. Time tracking tool
Time is one of the most crucial resources of every business, so using time tracking software can help you maximize the use of this resource. A time tracking tool documents the work performance of specific tasks in the organization in detail. This enables you to understand how you and your employees spend time, allowing you to identify areas in your business process where you focus too little or too much. This enables you to devise strategies that can help you improve the use of time. Time tracking software also allows you to charge clients appropriately, based on the time resource you have spent on their work.
Tools like the timesheet app can also help you monitor your employees to ascertain that they are working. When they are required to or in the proper working place at the right time to maximize business hours. A timesheet app uses GPS to track where your staff is at every given time. Which allows you to manage business operations 24/7 even when you are not in the office, improving accountability.
7. Email marketing software
Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to reach your target customers. It can help you realize a $36 return on investment on every dollar spent on the campaign when properly executed. Email marketing helps your organization capture leads, offer incentives, send newsletters, and harness the subscribe, open, and unsubscribe rate statistics to boost user retention and brand recognition.
Email marketing software like Constant Contact, MailChimp, and Moosend enable you to build an email contact list and develop newsletters that keep your potential and existing customers updated on your products and services. Email marketing tools can also help you determine the success of your email marketing campaign by tracking the open and click-through rates of your emails.
8. Accounting tools
Accounting is an integral aspect of running a successful business. It is crucial to monitor your business’ profits and expenses like salaries and wages, utility bills, and rent. To determine your company’s performance and make informed decisions. However, hiring an accountant can be costly. Manual accounting is also prone to human error, resulting in unreliable figures. So you should consider investing in accounting software to make tasks more manageable. Some crucial accounting tools you should consider investing in your business include:
- Bookkeeping tool
The bookkeeping software presents crucial accounting information in an easy and understandable format, enabling you to focus on other tasks.
- Tax software
One of the most effective ways to maintain your company’s integrity is by determining favorable tax outcomes and meeting your tax obligations. Tax accounting tools like Xero enable you to accommodate and navigate your country’s tax framework and regulations to foster compliance with your legal obligations.
- Payroll software
Payroll accounting tools like Xero and Freshbooks enable you to process payslips, annual bonuses, payroll, and superannuation payments, among other payroll obligations, efficiently and accurately. This ensures that employees are paid on time, boosting employee satisfaction and improving productivity. Payroll accounting software also helps you keep track of salary and wage expenses. Furthermore, for companies with employees abroad, it would be necessary to partner up with an Employer of record to handle documentation, global payroll, taxes other local employment requirements on their behalf.
9. Google analytics
Whether you are running a startup or an existing business, you rely on numbers to make crucial decisions. And the most effective way to track these numbers is through Google analytics. The Google statistics tool enables you to determine your business’ website traffic, demographics, and how users access your website. It also allows you to see which country your website has been viewed. The traffic drivers’ percentage difference, and their numbers.
This information is tracked on your site via graphs and charts. Making it easy to understand the data even if you are not tech-savvy. Through Google analytics, you can monitor the growth of your business to determine. Whether or not the company is performing as expected.
10. Customer relationship management (CRM) software
If you are looking to improve your customer retention rates. Build a strong relationship with your clients, and boost sales, you should consider investing in CRM tools. Customer relationship management software like Zoho allows you to record customer data and service issues. This information helps you to better understand your customer base. Allowing you to provide products and services tailored to their needs. The software can also enable you to determine sales opportunities and manage marketing campaigns to foster your business’ growth
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Investing in the right technological tools can mean the difference between the success and failure of your business. Familiarize yourself with the tools above and invest in those that will help your company thrive this year.
