Small business managers always have their work cut out. Their responsibilities are ambiguous, their working times are prone to be stretched, they own multiple projects, and they don’t always get the budgets they need to make work more productive and less troublesome for their teams and themselves.
Thankfully, smart business managers can hunt down web portals, cloud-powered apps, or downloadable business applications that can help them get more work done in less time. These tools are inexpensive, they’re intuitive and easy to use, and they can automate a lot of repetitive and mundane work. Plus, you can trust their advanced features to solve complex business problems quickly.
Here are some of the top platforms and tech tools that can solve your business problems.
QuickBooks
It’s time to upgrade from shoebox bookkeeping and MS Excel based invoicing. To be in the big league, you’ve got to manage accounting like the pros do. . This business dashboard tool lets you manage multiple functions, projects, departments, and websites.
For a startup project, use Cyfe to track sign-ups, downloads, subscriptions, and similar KPIs. It offers advanced social media capabilities, such as tracking Twitter followers, Facebook demographics analysis, and social media listening. You can track progress across your marketing channels such as content, email,
You can even leverage Cyfe to prepare advanced reports for your clients (for service businesses). Cyfe’s financial management features let you track expenses, customer invoices, balances, etc. Tasks, to-dos, projects, events – you name it, and Cyfe helps you manage it.
Loanable
Small business can face cash crunches when they least expect them. A sudden price spike in raw materials, delayed payment from a big buyer, need to upgrade equipment to ramp up production – the need could be anything. Sadly, small businesses don’t always have easy access to debt, particularly with loan applications taking weeks to be processed by traditional lenders.
Loanable is a solution; the web service allows you to specify your debt needs across options such as secured loans, short-term loans, bridging loans, etc. and connects you to dozens of lenders. Your application is assessed very quickly (it could be as quick as two hours). Loanable, hence, is a platform for quick access to debt when you need it the most.
GetResponse
Take control of the most frequently used online marketing channels and integrate them for maximum traction – all this and more using GetResponse. For starters, it offers you advanced email marketing solutions, right from creating stunning emails to setting up autoresponder messages. Drag and drop powered email editor, automatic scheduling of emails based on the timings at which user groups will be most likely to open the emails, A/B testing, and advanced analytics – all these make your email marketing highly empowered.
GetResponse helps you create stunning landing pages; it offers you 100+ mobile responsive templates, free stock photos, and advanced optimization tools. Also, you can use GetResponse for webinar marketing; send branded invitations, follow up emails, social media integrations, and analytics to market your webinars to a larger audience base. Once you get the hang of your digital marketing efforts, leverage GetResponse’s advanced marketing automation features to manage individual customer journeys.
Shopify POS Retail Package
Shopify POS helps retailers to accept payments easily for their offline store. Your customers have the option to pay with cash, credit, gift cards, Apple Pay, or Android Pay. Moreover, you can accept split payments and record partial payments as and when required.
Shopify also helps you to manage your daily cash flow so that you can easily monitor all the cash adjustments entered throughout the day. You can also record the activities of your staffs by creating staff PINs. This way you can manage multiple staff members for maintaining cash and credit transactions.
EchoSign
Why waste money on ink, paper, scanners, and printers, and why waste your time in sorting loose paper sheets, when you have EchoSign. This web-based service helps small businesses organize their quote and contract systems, apart from providing them a general purpose document management solution.
EchoSign allows you to simply and quickly upload documents to its server, and share them with anybody. E-sign functionality makes EchoSign perfect for official business document management. Key in your name and initials and EchoSign saves signed versions of your documents. Brand your business as an eco-friendly venture, with EchoSign and similar tools in your kitty.
Wix
If you don’t already have a website, use Wix today, and within a couple of hours, you will have a lovely website to your credit. No need to write even a single line of HTML code, because Wix gives you preset, professionally designed responsive website templates, along with a drag and drop based WYSIWYG website editor that you can use to quickly customize the template and get a unique website for your business. Even otherwise, you can use Wix to create landing pages, one-page website, and campaign-specific websites for your business.
oDesk
Chances are you don’t have twelve arms or supernatural abilities to do it all on your own. For everything you’re not an expert at, or don’t have the time for, there are employees. However, oDesk goes a step further and connects you to millions of freelancers with skills in thousands of business functions. For all your short-term projects, you can simply go to oDesk and bring a freelancer or contractor onboard.
With customer testimonials, portfolios, and work experiences available to you, it’s easy enough to shortlist qualified freelancers and quickly start getting things done on your projects. ODesk’s tracking tool helps you quickly understand and track the progress of the tasks you assign to freelancers. Plus, payments are secured and hassle-free.
Small business management is anything but ‘small’ in scope. Businessmen, entrepreneurs, and managers need smart tools to take care of things. Start with the ones mentioned in this guide; if your competitors beat you at this, they could well beat you in the market too!
