There are multiple tasks to complete, and decisions to be made daily for business owners. Today, with technology advances, many tools help business owners manage their day to day operations, and boost productivity in their team.
If you have employees working remotely, there are traditional conference calling services that help you keep in touch with your team. But, there many other tools to help give extra support. Below are five essential online tools you should be using in your business.
1. Project Management
An ongoing goal for businesses to get more done in less time. Project management tools help with increasing productivity in your industry. Some project management tools include:
- Evernote – is a productivity app that helps manage projects, ideas, and lists among all your digital devices.
- Asana – is a mobile and web app that help your team manage and track their work
- Slack – is a real-time organization and messaging tool for your team that lets them collaborate
- Trello – is a productivity tool that uses lists, cards, and boards for prioritizing and organizing projects
2. Travel
If your business involves traveling, numerous apps can help make your trip productive and enjoyable. Simplify your journey with these tools:
- Expensify – is a travel and expense app that tracks both your personal and business expenses
- TripIt – is a tool that helps you organize, plan, and manage travel plans in one convenient place
- Gas Buddy – is an app that lets you search gas prices by city, zip code and state
- MileIQ – is an automatic mileage tracker that will log your business miles
3. Social Media Management
Managing social media accounts can be difficult and time-consuming to do it properly. Numerous tools make managing social media much more accessible, these include:
- Hootsuite – is a platform that manages multiple social networks and scheduling posts
- Buffer – is a tool that can be used to drive traffic, increase engagement, and time management on social media
- TweetDeck – is a tool for managing, tracking, organizing, and engaging on Twitter
- Sprout Social – is a social media management told that helps businesses grow their presence on social media
4. Customer Service
Excellent customer service is vital to building a successful business. Make your process for building customer loyalty more efficient with some of these tools:
- Zendesk – is a web-based help desk software that is used by over 75,000 organizations to help manage customer service
- Get Satisfaction – is a customer engagement system that helps businesses build strong relationships with their customers and prospective customers
- LivePerson – is a messaging platform that helps drive online conversation with your customers and build customer loyalty
- Help Scout – is a live chat tool that has numerous features that are designed to improve your customer service
- Freshdesk – is a cloud-based customer support platform that offers support to customers through multiple channels
5. File Sharing
If you have an online business, or employees working remotely, you want to be able to share files efficiently with your team. There are file-sharing tools that help with boosting your productivity, including:
- Google Drive and Docs – you can edit and share documents on Google Docs, and store them on Google Drive, where other members of your team can easily access them
- Dropbox – is a tool that keeps your files safe, and is easy to share with employees
- Box – is a tool that allows online file sharing and content management services for smaller businesses
- Microsoft OneDrive – is a tool that lets you access and share your files from anywhere in the world on any device
Final Thoughts
Technology is a critical resource for the majority of businesses today. All these tools are designed to help streamline your daily operations, increase your productivity, and improve your business succeed. A lot of these tools now help with working remotely, so you do not even need a physical office, because staff can work from home on their computers. All these essential online tools can help grow your business.
