Starting small businesses is now quite simple thanks to the internet. Undoubtedly, beginning a small business is tremendously exciting, but there is no denying that challenges will inevitably arise. If your firm is small, you might not have enough employees or skilled workers to handle the stress of launching a new business.
Using a pen and paper to keep track of work hours, create schedules, or streamline communication is time-consuming. Small business owners are aware of the necessity to stay flexible and productive. Business owners can conduct their companies more successfully and efficiently with the use of numerous tools, software, and mobile applications.
Essential Apps for Small Business Owners
With the appropriate small business apps, you may achieve more than you ever imagined while expanding your company. Whether working from home, the office, or on the go, the small business applications make it simple and convenient to handle numerous areas of your organization.
We have emphasized the must-have small business apps that are most beneficial. All of these provide necessary functionality while also being cost-effective.
1. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a tremendous medium for business networking. You can send updates while you’re on the move, hire new employees, create contacts, follow influential people and businesses, or simply keep an eye on your competitors by using the LinkedIn app. It works especially well for B2B companies, but with such a large user base, B2C companies can also benefit greatly from it. Its main advantages include:
- Networking: Connect with business contacts in your field to expand your professional network.
- Boosting exposure: Use LinkedIn to distribute blog entries, advertise new goods and services, and more.
- Generate Leads: With the use of highly targeted searches, find new clients.
- Relationship building: Connect with others and maintain contact on LinkedIn to establish and strengthen client and customer relationships.
- Credibility: Showcase your business in a formal setting to get client or customer references.
- Leadership: In posts and articles, comment on industry news and add your ideas.
- Recruitment: To help your business expand, recruit new people through headhunting or advertising.
- Competition: Always keep track of your competitors with the help of LinkedIn.
2. Microsoft 365
Your team’s collaboration can be facilitated in innovative and effective ways with the aid of Microsoft 365.
- Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are the three main office suite programs that are part of Microsoft 365.
- OneDrive, which is a feature of the portion, is also available for online backups and is beneficial to use.
- Then there are the additional software programs that are a part of Microsoft 365. Such as Outlook available online, Publisher and Access, which are exclusively available for PC use.
- There is also a free version of Microsoft Teams that you can download and use separately.
Depending on whether you need to get a license for just yourself or a package for staff, a variety of editions are available. Additional corporate service and management tools are available for enterprise users.
3. Dropbox Business
Dropbox is an extremely practical solution that enables document sharing round the clock. For small business owners, Dropbox Business is strongly advised over the free version.
It supports exchanging big files privately or with a group. Team members can also communicate private information without worrying about data leak.
Spreadsheets, engineering blueprints and drawings, all types of text documents, maps, graphs, and images can all be shared.
4. Toggl
The best way to increase productivity is with the aid of Toggl, a fantastic application. To help you get things done, it is the simplest timer available. Teams, freelancers, and businesses can all use it perfectly.
Users only need to press a button and Toggl will swiftly deconstruct the data into manageable chunks. These chunks are then presented in a way that is transparent and simple to comprehend.
It is the ideal time tracker because this enables you to monitor your time across more than 80 internet tools. Once all the information is available and consumers are aware of how they spend their time, making adjustments is simple. This aids in letting you know how and where you spend your time so that you may make effective modifications to increase your productivity.
5. Hootsuite
The best social media management tool is Hootsuite, which enables users to monitor and control all of their social media platforms. Users may keep track of what is being said about their brand and assist in prompt retorts. The finest part of Hootsuite is that customers can watch several feeds from one location.
At the moment, it works with a variety of platforms, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Instagram, WordPress blogs, Vimeo, Tumblr, Evernote, Flickr, and Mailchimp, Slideshare, and Spotify.
This program was created specifically to manage social media efficiently. For instance, this program enables you to schedule posts and manage many streams from a single interface.
6. Picktime
Are you in need of a booking page to add to your website? Do you want to manage your staff and appointment schedules? The answer to all these questions is Picktime.
Picktime is a free online appointment scheduling software that enables you to manage appointments, staff, and resource schedules. Secure customer databases, effortless email marketing, automated email and SMS alerts, payments, and computerized invoice generation.
- Picktime enables you to build a customized booking page with unique intake forms to collect additional customer data.
- Enables customers to self-schedule their appointments round the clock.
- You can include the “book now” option on your website to make it easier for customers to arrange appointments.
- To avoid conflicts, easily limit your time, and manage the number of slots available, you can sync your Google, Outlook, or Apple calendars with your Picktime calendar.
- Manage your staff and resource schedules in one dashboard.
- Use virtual conferencing tools like Google Meet and Zoom to hold meetings remotely with customers no matter how far away they are.
- Picktime helps you engage your audience with email marketing by integrating Mailchimp and Constant Contact to improve your chiropractic practice.
- Never let a customer miss an appointment by using Picktime to send them automatic emails or SMS.
- Get advance payments from patients, integrate payment systems like Paypal and Stripe, and generate electronic invoices.
- And finally, this fantastic software comes with a huge bonus for you: it’s free!
Picktime offers a range of integrations in one place where businesses can coordinate, manage and execute planning in an effortless and efficient manner.
Conclusion:
It is obvious that using pen and paper for any area of your small business is not the most effective approach to doing tasks. With the correct digital solution, practically everything—from communication and job scheduling to training and time tracking—is simpler to maintain.
This list emphasizes the variety of small business apps that are offered to meet your specific business requirements. With all of these tools at your disposal, you can multitask, keep track of all the tasks completed each day, and monitor the performance of your team. In general, every app on the list is beneficial for small business owners and can help your company develop by streamlining many operational procedures.
