5 tools you didn’t realize your small business needs

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

By Regina Thomas

Starting a small business can be intimidating, especially when you have limited funding, time, and labor. With bills piling up and functioning demand overtaking supply, it’s no wonder smaller firms are failing these days.

Fortunately, there are tools developed to aid small businesses in dealing with these problems. The tricky part is selecting the ones that suit you. Here are some tools to assist you along in your business venture:

For fluid communication use Slack

Slack is a fast and efficient messaging program that allows you to communicate with your team, share files, and instantly find their message history. Good communication is a significant aspect of any business; this tool helps to streamline communication bringing substantial advantages. Small companies are lucky in the sense that normal operations don’t involve many channels of communication.

However, when your business grows together with customers, suppliers, employees, and contractors, you will be required to manage multiple projects fast without missing any detail. This tool provides accessible communication even if you’re in different time zones, and teams can easily catch up on new project developments. It makes communication flow easily and reliably with its features of colleague tagging and notifications.

For time management use Timely

This tool has tracks time for you while you work; this enables you to focus on your work and not be conscious of time. As every entrepreneur says, time is money, so managing your time enhances your productivity and self-management. Consciously keeping track of time disrupts your flow, and it’s time-intensive.

Timely keeps track of every detail, helping you discover essential insights like identifying processes that are struggling and finding the duration of project phases, determine the cost of work for profitable return and productive workflow. It also accounts for your efforts in the business. This enables you to control how your time is spent and infrastructure automation.

For collaborations use Google Suite

This tool provides extensive cloud-based packages for your business, ensuring co-workers communicate and collaborate in actual-time from anywhere on the globe. Collaboration is significant to every triumphant firm, which is a difficult feature to achieve. Activities such as team projects, customer feedback, and individual tasks all depend upon uncomplicated collaboration.

The solution is to obtain a program that can perform functions like file sharing and task interaction. The ability to streamline certain activities like fast messaging, electronic mail, or calls via the site itself in one system will move your business toward success. The Google suite has the added benefit of being secured with two-factor authentication and coded at rest and during data transfer.

For customer support use Intercom

It is the leading tool in client connectivity, and it does various activities such as marketing, sales, client support, and CRM solutions. If you desire to succeed as a firm, your clients should come first above everything. They will need you to be quick in your responses and relevant to their wants, such as requests, and responses to complaints or compliments.

Intercom is a three-part program that automates electronic mail fluidity to manage separate user parts systematically while responding to web or app client issues and developing resources to educate and inform clients. When your user base increases, you can automate to keep clients happy without overwhelming your employees.

For accounting use QuickBooks

It is a popular tool that helps your firm to track expenses, send out invoices on time, and pay your taxes. It can be tiring to track budgets, payments, and invoices, especially without experience with bookkeeping. If you mainly have trouble with numbers and comprehend the difference between individual and business taxes, QuickBooks will help make the operation simple. QuickBooks provides aid with accounting transactions and financial reports, making the accounting process easy for everyone without experience.

Before using any of the tools effectively, you must first know how to use them effectively. It is also recommended to test the tools before any purchase is made. Depending on reviews alone may make you incur a loss. Acquiring these tools from a reputable supplier will provide a free trial.

_______

Regina Thomas is a Southern California native who spends her time as a freelance writer and loves cooking at home when she can find the time. Regina loves reading, music, hanging with her friends and family along with her Golden Retriever, Sadie. She loves adventure and living every day to the fullest.

Leave a Reply

The Self-Employment Survival Guide can help you succeed. Learn all about it here.

Self-Employment Survival Guide book cover