Helpful Tools for Business Owners

[This article was written by Dawn Castell.]

Running a business can be a daunting task for anyone, regardless of experience. From payroll to delegating various projects, there are a number of plates you have to expertly spin in order to help your company thrive. To make matters more complicated, your list of problems never really goes away altogether; there will always be something to improve, something to fix, something to plan. Nevertheless, these problems do not need to define your organization. In fact, if approached in the right way, problems can be an excellent springboard for growth in your business, regardless of your budget and time constraints. Effectively implementing tools to determine the current and future challenges to the development of your company will not only bring you peace of mind as you go to work every day, but will also ensure that growth is consistent. This article provides three categories and various tools to consider implementing to boost your business.

Productivity

Since the beginning of time, small business owners have searched for the silver bullet to project management and productivity. This is primarily due to the fact that running a business is really all about getting more done in less time. While there isn’t necessarily a silver bullet to make that problem go away, there are a couple of productivity tools catered towards project management that can prove useful for your small business. Asana, for example, is a mobile app that helps keep track of team progress on specific projects. Furthermore, Asana is useful for creating agendas and to-do lists, and then tracking the communication that occurs regarding such agendas. Small business tools certainly don’t stop there. Another option for project management is Slack, a messaging tool that enables you to communicate with a specific team in real time. This is especially useful if you need to stay up-to-date with team progress but can only do so remotely.

Scheduling

Scheduling appointments is another aspect to running a small business that business owners wish they were better at doing. This is particularly important if your company is service-oriented and requires appointments to be scheduled days, weeks, and sometimes even months in advance. However, there are tools you can provide for your clients so that they can book their own appointments online, allowing you more time to focus on other pressing concerns. Used by more than 65,000 customers worldwide, Appointy is a scheduling software that has the ability to cater to almost every kind of business segment. Schedulicity is a mobile platform that you can implement as a way of not only scheduling appointments, but also supervising client management and email marketing. These solutions can help you weather any untoward situations that can and will arise as you manage scheduling.

Email Marketing

A problem for small business owners is building customer loyalty, as well as brand recognition with customers and potential customers. To add fuel to the fire, creating a unique and meaningful marketing strategy can be time-consuming. While there are a variety of marketing platforms available for you to choose what works best for your company, email marketing platforms can not only increase your credibility with clients and future customers, but at the same time also offer you a way to automate your small business marketing. InfusionSoft is ranked as the number one CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and advanced marketing automation platform. By automating your marketing and sales, you will find that your company not only lures in more leads, but turns them into a part of your clientele. Mad Mimi can be another way that you go, because this software tool can help you send HTML email newsletters to increase your pool of subscribers and keep track of your email list.

For small business owners, endless are the resources to help make your company more manageable, increasing productivity in less time. Remember that you are not alone, and that every business, no matter how successful it may appear on the outside, struggles with lists of problems and concerns that they have to address. However, problems can be an opportunity for you to take stock of your organization and make adjustments to improve the success of your business.