10 Tools Your Business Should Start Using Today
As the head of an enterprise, it’s your job to make executive decisions that everyone else has to abide by. Sometimes, these rules affect people’s conduct professionally and in the workplace. However, more often than not, we’re talking about decisions that change things for your entire staff.
For instance, if you paint the office floor orange, everyone has to work surrounded by orange for months and years.
The same thing happens with the choice of software. If you decide that the entire company is using Slack instead of Skype or Zoom instead of Google Meets, this will change the entire work dynamic in the business world.
Here are ten such software categories where you have a tough choice ahead.
1. Accounting software
Every company needs accounting software. This way, you can automate your invoices, improve record-keeping (for legal and IRS purposes), and automate your accounts payable. In other words, you get a far higher fiscal reliability and a chance to have the functionality of an accounting department, even if you have just one online accountant or virtual bookkeeper on a retainer.
Accounting software can save you from financial fraud, facilitate future analysis and projection, and centralize your financial data. This last part alone would make a world of difference.
2. Collaboration tools
Collaboration tools are the most useful resource management tools. They can help you keep track of all the tasks that your team has on their plates. When a new task pops up, you can assign it to the first person you see available. This isn’t true just for your employees. This way, you can organize your fleet and even your office space.
The best thing about collaboration tools is that they’re designed to give you a graphic representation of progress and current workload. In other words, you can access them via any device and instantly see how things are going. This is a game-changer.
3. Instant messaging
The next thing you need is to pick a business-only instant messaging platform. Why business-only? The first explanation is that you don’t want your employees to use Viber for work since it will distract them. Sure, they want to see what the partner has responded to, but they might also pause to see that meme they’ve just received from a friend.
Conventional IM software is also a huge security risk. A jealous ex will definitely pay a hacker to breach your Instagram and Facebook accounts, but they might just leave your Skype and Slack alone.
4. Conferencing tool
In the modern world (especially the post-pandemic), video conferences have almost completely replaced traditional meetings. And that’s a good thing, seeing as old-school meetings used to waste around 31 hours every month. We’re talking about meetings that were never supposed to be meetings but could have easily been circular emails instead.
These conferencing tools have great support for massive meetings, making them scalable. The “Raise Hand” option allows people to ask questions when it’s their turn without interrupting others.
5. Inventory management software
Inventory management software can help you figure out the current capacities of your business. It helps you with your supply system and vendor management and gives you an early heads-up if something’s wrong. Sometimes, it’s just a simple misstep, but sometimes, it misappropriates corporate resources.
The best thing is that you will never again have to handle inventory audits. You can get an insight in real time. Through automation, you can even get notifications when a change occurs. This way, you can track suspicious activity as it’s happening, which gives you a lot of opportunity to react.
6. Email marketing tools
Email marketing still has an amazing ROI (some say up to 4400%). All modern business is done via email. Circular emails are still the preferred way to send important notices to your team, and reaching out to partners via email is the “polite” way of approaching this.
Now, your email output will determine the cost-effectiveness of an email marketing campaign. How many emails can a person doing outreach send per day, even with a great routine and email template? Two, three hundreds. Let’s say that they can even send as many as five hundred emails. With the right email marketing tool, you can send 50,000 to 100,000 with ease.
7. Customer relationship management (CRM)
Understanding your customers is one of your primary objectives. This will affect your product development, sales, and marketing. In other words, all the money-making aspects of your business.
A CRM gives you a centralized database of all the relevant information. This way, you can handle targeting better and develop a rapport that will improve your customer relationships. In a lot of industries, customer relationships make all the difference. The lifetime value of a customer can make or break a business. Also, a return customer turns into a brand ambassador, promoting your brand out of conviction, even defending you against negative comments out of their own free will.
8. ERP tool
The ERP (enterprise resource planning) tool is an all-in-one platform that helps you handle data, finances, and human resources in a single platform. It also allows you to handle your manufacturing and production more efficiently, improve your supply chain, and more.
Bear in mind that the main purpose of an ERP tool is to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible. The priority is streamlining your business processes and minimizing unnecessary downtime.
Since it’s an end-to-end platform, ERP tools are usually designed to be easily integrated with other tools that you’re currently using. Needless to say, with each integration, your ERP tool becomes more and more potent.
9. SEO analytics tools
Every business in the 21st century values its online presence. With the help of the right SEO analytics tools, you’ll see how well your business ranks and how high its visibility is online. Even if you’re not heavily investing in SEO (which you should), understanding how well you’re faring against the competition is vital.
Just try to imagine a regular process of a person interested in your brand. How easy is it for them to find you even if they’ve heard about your company? How easy can they find you if they’ve never heard about it?
Once you understand your organic traffic and SEO ranking, these questions will be much easier to answer.
10. AI NLP tools (like ChatGPT)
While content creation with the use of AI is still a controversial topic, the truth is that AI NLPs are very useful. They can give you outlines for your articles (saving time), provide immense help with research, help you organize talking points for your meetings, and more.
You can even use it to help explain something to you like you’re five or ten. With the right prompt, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Also, remember that this is a developing technology and that we’re currently on the verge of ChatGPT4 AI. You can expect even greater reliance on this technology in the future, so early adoption seems even more appealing.
With the right toolset, your business will instantly become better organized
Each of these tools is designed to make your business process slightly easier. They help you automate mundane tasks, facilitate communication, and make various segments of your firm self-reliant. This makes a world of difference and gives you a scalable foundation for your business model. Therefore, each of these tools should be introduced as soon as possible so that you can start reaping the benefits as soon as possible.
Research Snipers is currently covering all technology news including Google, Apple, Android, Xiaomi, Huawei, Samsung News, and More. Research Snipers has decade of experience in breaking technology news, covering latest trends in tech news, and recent developments.
