Making Business Easier With The Right Software

By Business Desk

Tuesday, May 21, 2019.

It’s hard to escape computers when you run your own business. From researching your field to marketing products, a huge amount of your work will be handled on these machines, though a lot of people don’t use these devices to their full potential. There are loads of software options out there which can make your daily life far easier, and this post is going to be exploring some of them to give you an insight into the role you can make a machine like a computer play.

Cloud Tools

Most people have heard of cloud tools before, with this side of computing becoming incredibly popular over the last few years. Several big players have taken prominent places in this area, with examples like Google and Microsoft offering some of the best cloud services on the market. The core of the cloud is storage space, with internet connections plenty fast enough in most places to be used for important work.

Along with storage, cloud subscriptions will also provide users with tools like office software, email and communications, and even internet resource management tools to make it easier to keep your business moving in the right direction. You don’t have to install anything on your machine to use these features, making it possible to access you work for anywhere, even when the machine you have to do it on is far less powerful than your daily driver.

There are other companies out there which offer cloud tools and services which differ from those from the big players. It’s worth doing your research when you are looking at software for your business, as it can be surprising what you can find which might help you, especially as more and more developers are giving away their tools for free. It’s crucial that you understand the privacy laws surrounding your business before storing data online.

CRM Services

Customer-relationship management has skyrocketed and become a vital field to businesses around the world. Adopting an approach which uses data analysis to build better relationships with current and future customers, CRM services have been proven to create potential. This revolves around data, making it critical that you have information to get started with, and this is something which a lot of businesses neglect.

It takes a lot of work to manage your customer relationships and make something of leads. CRM tools make it easier, giving you the chance to review data which can help you to know who to target, along with providing collaboration tools which make it possible to work closely with your business partners without treading on one another’s feat.

For a CRM system to work properly, it needs to be heavily integrated with the other systems you use, and this is something where a lot of these fall short. Options like Copper CRM can connect up to your most-used tools, like Gmail and Office, saving loads of time moving data around. People often fail to keep their CRM systems up to date when they are busy, and unreliable data is useless, making this sort of feature invaluable no matter your size.

Invoicing and Accounting

Managing money is something which a lot of small business owners struggle with. It’s hard to keep your finances in order when you have a lot of other work on your plate, and this can create serious problems as you go through life in business. Most freelancers and small companies will only need the power to send invoices, making systems like Wave great. It’s worth doing some research to learn how to make invoices if you’ve never done it in the past.

Working as an accountant is something which most people don’t like the idea of. Equally, though, paying someone like this is an equally unpleasant prospect, albeit for different reasons. To make this easier to handle, loads of companies have come out with their own online accounting tools which are designed to put the power of a firm in the hands of a small business owner. This is far cheaper than going through a professional company, but will also be more work for you.

Time-Management

Time is another area which can cause a struggle for small business owners. Keeping track of all of the work you have to do can make life feel chaotic, with a lot of people struggling to handle each and every one of their jobs. Calendars and note taking software can be helpful with this, though it often doesn’t work very well to manage this by yourself, making it worth looking into a time management tools which can help you out.

There are loads of systems available on the market to take control of this job, with some offering notifications when you should start your next task, and others making your schedule into a game, giving you objectives to complete along the way. Taking a different approach with something like this is always worthwhile. It can surprise you to find what will work when you’re trying to improve the way you manage your time, especially when you rely on a computer to help you.

Communication

Without communication, it would be impossible to run a business, and there are loads of different ways to communicate around the web. Companies across the globe have been taking advantage of them for a long time, but it has been hard for smaller operations to get their hands on them. This has changed over the last decade or so, with the doors opening to businesses which want to talk to their customers.

Email: This is possible the most popular form of online communication, with billions of emails being sent across the world every day. You will probably already have access to a service like this, but it is worth thinking about what you use for it, and whether or not it could be more professional. Companies like Google make it easy to use your own domain name in your email address.

Phone: Not a lot of people realise that they can have a permanent phone number which doesn’t use a phone line. Using a public broadcast exchange, or PBX, system, it’s possible to make and receive calls to hundreds of different numbers, without having to pay the expensive rental fees which come with a normal number. This is perfect for home offices which are trying to look like biggers companies.

Instant Messages: If you’ve been using the internet for some time, you’ve probably used instant messaging before. Whatsapp, Facebook chat, and Hangouts all fall into this category, and offer a unique experience when compared to email or phone calls. This is best for internal communications, with customers and clients requiring something more professional.

Productivity

Keeping yourself and others working to a tight schedule takes a lot of coordination. When you’ve got your own important tasks to manage, trying to look after other people will be a real challenge, and a lot of small business owners struggle with this. To overcome this sort of issue, several companies have come out with clever systems which are designed to keep everyone moving in the same direction.

Asana is a great example of this, giving managers the chance to set up tasks for all of their team members, with different stages and pieces of work to deliver. As they go through each task, they can mark it as complete. Not only does this help to make sure that people are working on the right things, but it also saves you from having to keep track of all of it. It can take hours to figure out the state of a project when you have several teams working on it.

This can go further than collaboration, though, with some businesses going as far as making their productivity software into a tool for competition. Any business which is target driven can benefit from having each of their team member’s results on display. This is an easy way to avoid making it look like your always rewarding the same people, as everyone will have the chance to have their moment in the sun.

Education

Learning to use your computer is one of the hardest parts of all of this. It doesn’t matter how many tools you have to help you or how much time you put into it; it will be impossible to make proper use of a computer without the right education. Thankfully, you can give this to yourself, with clever software options popping up all the time. Lynda is a great example of this, offering both knowledge and ease of access, without costing a fortune to get started with.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of making your business easier to run with clever software. Not a lot of small business owners go down this route, struggling with problems which they could easily solve with the right applications. Smartphones, computers, and all of the other devices you use are incredibly powerful; you just need to unlock their potential.