Technology for small businesses: Start Here
In today’s digital age, more and more businesses rely on software tools to help them keep operations running smoothly. We asked small business owners which tools they’ll be using in the new year, here’s a breakdown by category.
Lead Generation Tools
LiveChat
LiveChat replaces e-mails, which are typically sluggish and time-consuming phone calls.
With the help of the program LiveChat, website users may have real-time conversations with your customer service team. It is an e-commerce and customer service solution.
Why small businesses love it:
“I love Livechat for a small business, especially in the service category, it is one of my most consistent way of converting website traffic into great leads. The cost is minimal and the opportunity to talk directly to consumers is incredible. It's great for customer service and support and new features like chatbots can help provide an assist.” Aalap Shah, founder of 1o8, a digital marketing agency based in Chicago.
Time Management Tools
Harvest
Harvest is a time and expenditure tracking tool that helps you gather crucial project data that will help improve future project estimates, learn from the past, and keep ongoing projects on schedule.
Harvest allows small business owners to:
- Examine historical data to enhance how you plan and price projects.
- Recognize which initiatives are successful and why.
- Recognize when to accept new business (or grow your team)
Why small businesses love it:
“For the low monthly price, this can't be beaten. It easily handles my time working on client's projects, sends out reports and more. It has made my job so much easier and clients love the detailed reports they receive. I don't see switching from this any time soon.” Jeff Moriarty, owner of JMoriarty Marketing
SmartBreak
Smart Break is a novel approach to creating happy and healthy teams. Their digital platform allows staff to foster camaraderie while feeling more energised, productive, and develop a pleasant workplace culture in as little as 3 months of taking breaks.
Why small businesses love it:
“SmartBreak is an app that tracks my computer usage then locks my screen forcing me to take a short break. The frequency and duration of breaks are customizable.
There's also a one-time snooze button in case you're concentrated on a certain task. When working long hours on creative projects, I tend to get tunnel vision.
Taking frequent breaks helps me stay engaged with the project and get more work done in less time.”
- Calvin West, Owner and Lyric Video Producer at www.calvinwest.com
HubStaff
Hubstaff creates workforce management and productivity tools to improve collaboration across remote, mobile, and expanding workforces. Hubstaff's tools help small businesses with: time tracking, employee monitoring, workforce management and agile project management.
Why small businesses love it:
“Hubstaff is more than a simple time tracking software. It also takes screenshots of employee’s screens, enabling them to see how they spend their time and which tasks are more time-consuming and why. Hubstaff is a great productivity tool that helped us to streamline our work and be more productive.” Raj Vardhman, Co-founder of goremotely.net
4. Time Doctor
Time Doctor assists company leaders in being more involved on each project, providing encouragement and stepping in when necessary by tracking and evaluating how your staff spends their time. Additionally, the on-screen information will help business owners identify top performers, boosting employee morale.
Why small businesses love it:
“When you transition from the 9 to 5 world into the world of entrepreneurship, the hardest adjustment you have to make is learning how to manage your own time. A friend recommended Time Doctor as a way to keep myself on task, and it’s been immensely helpful. I use it to track remote employee productivity, too, which is a helpful way to ensure that you’re not being overbilled.” Connie Heintz, President of DIYoffer
Project & Team Management Tools
1. Tello
For professionals seeking for their next employment opportunity, MintResume is a collection of resume examples, resume templates, cover letter samples, and career-related articles.
Trello's mission is to be helpful and innovative while assisting business owners in finding work that brings them fulfillment and happiness.
Why small businesses love it:
“I'd strongly recommend small businesses to use Trello, especially if they freelancers or have a remote, dispersed workforce. It's a visual project management tool that allows everyone to collaborate in an easy and organized way.” William Taylor, Career Development Manager at MintResume
2. Asana
You may manage tasks with Asana's assistance, concentrate on what matters, and consolidate your work for easy collaboration. To keep your tasks on track, small company owners don't need to switch between spreadsheets, email, and other applications when you have Asana. They can now track and manage everything using Asana from the first day until the deadline.
Why small businesses love it:
“It's fantastic for project management, to-do lists and more. You can use a free version, or upgrade it to unlock all the features. I really recommend it!” Amelia Whyman, Marketing Executive at Global App Testing
Why small businesses love it:
“This goes beyond a simple to-do list and allows us to track successes, failures, and projects at a wider business level as a whole team. Perhaps the most powerful tool is the option to assign subtasks.” Mark Webster, Co-Founder of Authority Hacker
Why small businesses love it:
“We are a small team, which means that everybody working here is simultaneously working on several projects. That’s why we need to have something that can help us organize and streamline our work and help us successfully bring tasks to completion." Ana Bera, Co-founder of SafeAtLast
Connecteam
With Connecteam, a mobile management solution, businesses can develop their own employee smartphone applications, which has improved internal communication and remote workforce management for tasks like scheduling, performance management, and training as well as employee satisfaction surveys.
Why small businesses love it:
“Besides managing your employees, you can communicate, operate, and train them through this software application.
It offers a complete package that includes time tracking, job scheduling, employee records, and operational procedures.
It has customizable features to enhance the learning experience like creating a professional course to train your employees. You can build a searchable library and can also conduct questionnaires and quizzes.
The internal communication features enable the user to chat in both private and group conversations.”
Communication Tools
Slack is a business chat platform that links users to the data they require. Slack changes how businesses communicate by uniting employees to work as a single cohesive team.
Why small businesses love it:
“It's one of the best team communication software out there, and it's free. Unlike other online communication tools, it's very easy to use, and that it comes with integration options." Pratibha Vuppuluri, Chief Blogger at She Started It, an online resource guide for working moms.
Accounting Tools
Bench
Bench helps small busienss owners stay in charge of their finances, providing them with monthly financial statements and cost summaries. Quick-to-read graphic reports enable business owners to view the overall picture and provide them with useful information for their business growth.
Why small businesses love it:
“Bench is a bookkeeping software that has a personal team behind it and saves me from having to do any bookkeeping.”
Accounting Tools
QuickBooks products were first released in 1983 and are primarily targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises.
They provide cloud-based accounting programs that take payments from companies, manage and pay invoices, and handle payroll in addition to on-premises accounting tools.
Why small businesses love it:
“I recommend Quickbooks. It’s intuitive, easy to use and makes invoicing really easy. I’ve used it since September and will continue to use it in the future. I like that I can share with my accountant and it shows all my transactions easily.” Eliza Erskine, founder of Green Buoy Consulting
Wave
Wave is a double input accounting tool. Direct bank data imports, tracking of invoices and expenses, customization of the chart of accounts, and journal transactions are all provided as services. Accounting by Wave connects with the expense-tracking program Shoeboxed and the online store Etsy.
Why small businesses love it:
“It’s a great piece of accounting software for single-person enterprises like mine, and I recommend it to all of the freelancers I work with, too.” Connie Heintz, President of DIYoffer
Email Management Tools
Spark
Spark is used by business owners to improve email communication among their teams. To compose, share, and debate emails with coworkers in Spark, business owners may establish a team. If business owners require feedback from their teams, they no longer need to regularly transmit emails or copy them to their messenger.
Why small businesses love it:
“Spark is my absolute favorite email client, it is almost as good as having an assistant go through all of my emails and sort them.” Evan B. Knox, founder of Caffeine Marketing
HR Management Tools
Vacation Tracker
VacationTracker helps small business owners keep track of their workers' holidays and other time off. This software helps business owners manage their company's vacation policy, enables employees to seek vacation, streamlines the approval process, and keeps track of who is in and out of the office at any given moment.
Why small businesses love it:
“We love this software because it decreased our HR manager’s time spent on leave tracking and enabled our employees to avoid burnout and be their best productive selves year-round.”
- Darko Jacimovic, Co-founder of whattobecome.com
PeopleHR
PeopleHR is for small to midsized businesses. It offers a platform for all essential HR tasks, such as tracking applicants, monitoring employees, reviewing performance, and more.
Why small businesses love it:
“Small businesses often have a mix of employees on salary and zero-hour contracts. Peoplehr.com is a great software I considered for many of my smaller, past projects. It helps me spend less time on HR and more time managing” < Domenic Carosa, Founder and Non-Executive Chairman at Bitcoin.com.au
Content Management & Marketing Tools
Event Webinar
EverWebinar is a cloud-based service that enables companies to plan and broadcast recorded webinars on predetermined dates or as recurrent events.
Why small businesses love it:
“EverWebinar has been a great anchor for our content marketing efforts by allowing us to record and distribute automated webinars to potential leads for three years now.
The ability to load pre-recorded content and control how it's distributed, in either an on-demand or monitored basis, helps us attract new viewers every day.
Moreover, the detailed analytics provided on the back end provides a snapshot into user engagement, demographics, and peak usage.”
- Shaan Patel, Founder, and CEO of Prep Expert
Ahrefs
Ahrefs: Link building, keyword research, competition analysis, rank tracking, and site auditing features are all included in the SEO software suite Ahrefs.
The majority of Ahrefs' features were created with marketers in mind. In a nutshell, Ahrefs is an SEO tool intended to assist users in improving their Google results.
Why small businesses love it:
“I do most of the marketing myself, so I'm a huge fan of Ahrefs, the SEO tool. This tool helps me in developing my content marketing strategy. As someone who has built most of my business online, SEO is a crucial part of my business." <
This tool is the key to a successful content marketing strategy, and I'd highly recommend it as a solution for small businesses.”
- John Linden, Owner of MirrorCoop