Affordable business management tools for small businesses

Being efficient in managing your small business is essential. Fortunately, there are plenty of new management tools to help you do that.

Being efficient in managing your small business is essential. Fortunately, there are plenty of new management tools to help you do that.

By Marcus Jensen

Having the best management tools is essential these days, and smart small business owners follow the latest trends and developments in this area. Here is the selection of affordable management tools that will enable you to improve your operations:

Remember the Milk: This is one of the best task management tools on the market, in addition to Basecamp and Teamwork. When managing a large group of people and assigning separate tasks to each of them, you ought to find a way to manage all of these tasks at the same time and do it easily. This is where Remember the Milk comes into play – it helps you assign tasks, manage them and follow their completion.

The best thing about Remember the Milk is that it treats your users as contacts and makes it super easy to organize them in separate groups, give orders and share files. So, if you are managing an entire team of people working on a same project, this might be the tool for you. Also, it has a great response method and notifies you about your to-dos in every possible way there is – from e-mail (it can be synched with your mail account), IM and text message to Skype and Twitter.

Mozy: Backing all of your files and folders up on a bunch of external hard drives will save you should your system collapse, but what if these collapse as well? To prevent damages and losses, you should start backing up your files online and using a cloud-based technology. Combining professional approach, efficiency and affordability, Mozy is a great solution you might want to look into.

The thing about this tool is that it does everything your average online backup tools do – from storing all your sensitive data under a password to making a copy of your documents online – but it is much, much more comprehensive. You can archive basically everything you want from all corners of the Internet and it can all be done overnight so it does not disrupt your work.

Google Apps for Work: More and more people rely on Google apps for individual use because they are free, easy to learn, and accessible from literally every spot on the planet with an Internet connection. Their perks are allowing them to find their way into the world of business, and small business owners are making them their go-to business management tools.

However, using Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Gmail and other Google apps for work on a higher level also requires a different approach. Setting up Managed Google Apps for your company will ensure you get all the services you need and all the logistics support you require. An affordable annual subscription will provide you premium services such as additional mail accounts, cloud storages and other third-party apps.

ZipRecruiter: When hiring new people, knowing who they are and what they are capable of is important. Tools like ZipRecruiter will give you all the information you need, help you search employees online, browse their qualifications, and assist you in listing resumes. This is additionally important when hiring online and via LinkedIn or other sources.

All of these tools are highly affordable, so give them a try to see which ones will benefit your small business the most.

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Marcus Jensen is an Australian IT support professional. He’s running his own business, working with companies that outsource their IT maintenance. He often writes about technology, business and marketing and is a regular contributor on several sites.

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