I came across a few facts about small businesses and the importance of small business tools that left me in complete shock. One of the facts stated that:
“3 new startups launch globally every second, making up for 11,000 per hour, or 25,9200 per day!”
followed by the fact:
“A study by CBI Insights showed that 9 out of 10 new startups fail, mostly because they have not done market research before they launch their product or service”.
This left me wondering- what can be the reason for the failures of these startups?
A small business can fail due to thousands of different factors. They might lack the right business strategy, they might exist in a very competitive environment, or they might fail to ramp up their productivity due to a lack of awareness of important small business tools. When all these factors work out in our favor, we can say that our business is good to go for the rest of the years to come.
Today we will share the top 11 small business tools to manage their business and ramp up their productivity.
Picktime:
One of the foremost things that every small business should focus on is a properly planned schedule. A properly planned schedule helps us to get organized and gives us clarity of how well ahead or well behind the schedule we are. For this type of scheduling, Picktime is the best choice. It is a free online scheduling software and a booking management system that manages our appointments and reservations. Unlike most of the software, Picktime is free to use and they provide a wide range of features with different subscription plans.
Upwork:
In small businesses, the number of employees we hire is limited. There are many situations where we might have a short-term requirement of a particular skill-set that is not present in the hired employees. Under such situations, Upwork is the best platform to go for. Upwork is a global marketplace where freelancers and employers work together remotely. It allows businesses to hire freelancers for anything and everything. Whether you need web developers, graphics designers, social media managers, etc., all these requirements can be fulfilled by using Upwork.
Quora:
Small businesses have many battles to fight to survive in a highly competitive market. They might even have some difficulties for which they might need guidance or suggestions from experienced people from the same field. For situations like this, they can completely rely on Quora. Quora is a crowdsourced Q&A forum, where we can find answers for almost everything. The people who usually answer are experts in that particular domain, and hence, we can rely on them for suggestions and ideas.
Intercom:
Usually, in startups, one employee has to look after numerous different tasks and due to less number of employees in a startup, sometimes they are unable to give ample amount of time to their customers. Due to this, the customers might get the feeling of being ignored and unimportant. This would eventually end up making the business lose its client. To avoid this, we have Intercom. An intercom is a tool that offers a suite of functionality to give live chat, education, and more for the customers, making it easier to interact, engage, and communicate with them.
GSuite:
Google has an all-in-one platform built to integrate and bring all the functionalities important to a business in one place. It becomes easier for the company to provide all the useful information in one place, and then this information can be viewed and altered by the remaining company members. All this can be done using the Google GSuite.
Slack:
Slack is software where all the important communication related to the company, clients, and work can take place. All the company members, owners can communicate with each other, share their work, and actively discuss their business strategies with the help of this tool. On Slack, we can do file-sharing, phone calls, message search, and a lot more.
Internshala:
Sometimes, we may need some interns for a particular project where our employees get to learn some unique approaches suggested by the interns which might be useful under some situations whereas the interns from Internshala, get complete on hands experience on how the company works, how the management of work needs to be done, and how things get done in a short period. Hence, it’s a win-win situation for both us as well as the interns.
GoodHire:
Based on the projects that we get, there are situations where we need to expand our team in a short period. This task can be time-consuming and may require a lot of backend work like background checks of employees, track records, education degree verifications, etc. All these things can be done within a short period by using GoodHire. GoodHire takes care of all the background work and mostly, they deliver results within 24 hours. Hence, it’s a must-have tool for small businesses.
SalesLoft:
In small businesses, it’s important to know what types of customers are we getting, what can be the expected target audience, how can we improvise our customer list, what changes are to be made in our targeting strategy, etc. For all this, we have a tool known as the SalesLoft. SalesLoft is a sales engagement platform that helps to understand the customer's needs and respond in meaningful ways. This is a very useful tool if fulfilling customer needs is our top priority.
GoCo:
One of the most important parts of any business is HR. It plays a crucial role in the proper functioning of a business. Sometimes, HR work may seem to be too complex and time taking, which serves as an additional burden. GoCo is a tool that relieves us from this burden. This tool streamlines the onboarding of employees, management of documents, time-off tracking, performance management, compliance, benefits administration, and a lot more.
Telzio:
Communication management plays a key role in the success of a company. As a company owner, I should make sure that within my company, my employees are not having any communication gap between them and this communication gap can be filled with this tool called Telzio. Telzio provides an office phone system over the internet. The benefit of this tool is that it offers a simpler way for businesses to establish, run, and maintain a phone system for their employees. Team members can manage calls and access them from multiple locations over the internet.