Starting a business can be a mixture of excitement and a bit of anxiety, but not trying to give it a shot, especially if you think you have a golden idea, will haunt you in the coming years. An important thing about it is to do your research thoroughly.
Although, doing it once and repeating it is the easiest way to go about it you will be more efficient if you did your research and do a lot of things right. Like putting up a house, you wouldn’t want to put the floorboards only to mess it up with ceiling works or damaging it by moving heavy furniture and appliances.
In this age of internet connectivity, the tools that maximize those capabilities have become an invaluable part to make daily tasks easier and organized. Most businesses involve tasks that can be processed or delegated to software tools and hosting providers to free up some bandwidth for you and your employees.
You can use these tools to help you keep track of your projects, manage your time, as well as improve your capacity to focus on more important things. While there are different tools for your different needs, it is good to know the popular ones for each category and from there you can select the ones that best suit you and your needs.
Here are some of the tech tools that you’ll need if you’re starting with your business:
1. Task and Time Tracking
When combined with free time tracking software, these tools will help you organize your tasks as well as assign tasks to your team. It will help you see the progress of each task and see opportunities to improve. It will also give you a better vision of the project and spot bottlenecks and mitigate problems before they arise.
Here are some examples of these tools:
- Trello – It is the most popular project management tool. It’s free and user-friendly.
- Calendly – If you have a lot of meetings and you’re having a hard time keeping track of them.
You can use this tool to help you manage your schedule. It can connect to your Outlook and Google Calendar so you’ll have all of your appointments in one place. This is also useful for appointments and tasks that you can’t afford to miss and integrates nicely into almost any web design.
- Cushion – Does your business involve freelancing projects? This tool creates a calendar for your projects.
You will have a forecast on your schedule and see if you can fit in more projects or if there is some downtime you can enjoy.
2. Tax Tools
These are important tools that’ll help you prevent headaches from the IRS and make your processing and submission easy.
According to Taxry.com Tax Tools Management services help you find the best tax professional that’ll make filing your taxes easy and simple. This is especially important if you’re starting up as there will be items you’ll need to take note that are a little different than a personal tax filing.
They can also help you pay off debts and find the best financial services that can help you save money, hence increasing your margins.
3. Communication Channel
Effective communication within the organization is one of the most vital aspects of keeping your business running smoothly. In today’s age of telecommuting, it is even more vital to be able to give your team the ability to stay in touch with each other without being physically there.
This will optimize everyone’s time and will make the flow of ideas and information run faster.
- Slack – One of the most popular apps for communication in the market today. It is perfect for internal communication and allows teams to create their own channels for their relevant conversation.
- It also has video conference capabilities that are very useful to get everyone in one place virtually.
Its simple and user-friendly attributes make it a leading choice for start-up businesses.
Good communication will also come through your branding and brand name. Choosing the right name for your business will set the tone and culture of your business and help promote the company ethos. BusinessNameGenerator is one of the leading name generators for small business owners and entrepreneurs, a fast and free approach to coming up with a new business name.
Their free online tool can be found here: BusinessNameGenerator.net
If creative thinking is not your strong suit, using a business name generator can help you brainstorm. Simpy add some keywords or phrases relevant to your industry and let the Business Name Generator start pumping out ideas for your brand start-up.
4. Financial Management Tool
This is an important tool to help you keep track of your finances.
It helps you monitor and hold your budget for important things and prevent the diversion of funds for unnecessary purchases.
- Expensify – This tool makes managing your finances easy and manageable.
If you’re getting bigger you can delegate this task to your finance team and they’ll find this tool useful to generate reports that are easy to read for you. You can upload images of receipts and send purchase orders for approval from your phone.
5. Research Tool
One way to keep yourself in the game is to monitor your competition and other entities that can greatly influence your business.
This tool can help you keep track of this information and help you make better decisions.
- Owler – This tool helps you monitor interesting companies and alerts you of any news that can be an opportunity for you. It can also be used to keep an eye on the competition.
This a good tool to aid in your sales because it removes noise and lets you focus on the actionable insights about the company.
6. CRM
If you’re handling different clients and you want to keep track of the business you have with all of them, then perhaps an all-in-one marketing platform is for you. The objective is simply to improve relationships with those clients, which can translate to more business opportunities.
These tools help you streamline processes, establish a good communication line with your customers, and help increase profitability.
- Salesforce – The biggest CRM company that employs cloud computing to help you move deals faster, use updated and relevant data to make insightful decisions, capitalize on customer engagement by automating email and correspondence, and creates an exceptional environment by connecting your clients directly to marketing, after-sales, and other services.
- Infusionsoft – this tool is an all-in-one tool that helps you manage your lead database and your customers.
It also handles email marketing, eCommerce transactions, and opportunities. This tool has helped a lot of small businesses convert leads to sales.
- Dubsado – like any other CRM but more lightweight, it has the basic solution to remove the busywork.
It can help you foster business relationships, schedule appointments, and design workflows for your projects.
7. File Hosting
You’re going to need a place to store your data and you’ll also need to have the ability to recover those files in case a problem arises.
These services will help you keep your data safe and will maintain your client’s confidence that sensitive information will not fall into the wrong hands.
- SugarSync – Originally they offered synchronization of images across different devices, it has expanded its business to offer easy-to-use data backup and cloud solution. It allows users to save, access, edit, sync, and share their files safely.
You can use different devices to use this tool and because it’s cloud computing you can do everything remotely.
- Box – This app is good for businesses that require high data demands.
Its features include automated workflow, machine learning tools, and collaboration. You can also have third-party integrations, convenient and secure file sharing, and state-of-the-art file management.
These tools are considered essential as you start and make your business grow. In a world driven by data, you’ll have an edge if you know how to incorporate its gathering and processing.
But tools are just tools and their efficacy will ultimately rely on their users, so before you start your business make sure to do your research on the other aspects of a business. Good luck!
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