Succeeding in the modern day business environment is a different ball game from what it used to be a few decades back. Today, with some of the modern business tools currently available, you can start a business right from your home, run your business right there in your home and become a millionaire right there in your home.
In this article, we will be looking at some of the most basic of these business tools. There are very many tools some of which are listed here. We cannot look every one of them so we will focus on the must-haves.
Website
This is the very basic of all modern day business tools. Your website plays multiple roles in modern-day business. It can be your office, your showroom, your store, and many other things. If you are running a business without a website in today’s reality, then your business has not taken off.
Regardless of what your business is about, a website will add tremendous value to it if built well and optimized properly. It does not matter if you offer services or physical products. Even if your services or products require the customer or client to come physically to a location, a website can increase your patronage.
Today, you can book a stay in a hotel in a different continent from you if the hotel has a website. You can even see the room and make payments without being there physically. You can book plane tickets, choosing the exact seat you want from the seats available all from the comfort of your room or anywhere you are.
As of December 2018, there were almost 2 billion websites in the world. There surely is a reason why everyone is ensuring they have websites. If your business does not have any other tool, it should at the very least have a website.
Like we stated earlier, your website has to be well designed, built and optimized. There are some companies that can help you with this. An example is CityTech which can offer this and other solutions.
Business Process Management Tools (BPM)
After setting up your website, running any business requires some repetitive actions like the processing of payments, invoices, management of accounts, etc. You now have several BPM tools that increase your efficiency by automating these processes.
It could be payroll processing or any other important accounting activities. You will find several tools that enable you to carry them out efficiently and quickly. The interesting thing about these tools is that they are a lot cheaper than what it would have cost you to hire a person to handle them.
So, these tools do not just increase your efficiency; they also increase your profit by lowering your overhead.
Customer Relationship Management
Your customers are at the heart of your business. If you lose them, you lose your profit. CRM tools make managing your relationship with your customers not just easy but also very efficient. It helps you tailor your services to your customers’ exact needs.
It can also help you cultivate prospective customers until they become full, paying customers. Regardless of the size of your business, CRM software will improve your customer relations, helping you achieve a higher level of customer satisfaction and by implication, customer retention.
Other SaaS Tools
Aside from these tools listed above, there are a lot of other SaaS (Software as a Service) tools that help all levels of businesses manage their different operations affordably. These increase efficiency without increasing the cost of running the business. They increase efficiency but reduce overhead. All these amounts to increased profit.
Here are some of the popular SaaS tools available now:
Trello – Is a job board for teams. It enhances communication during projects, helping each team member see the progress that is being made on any project. It also makes assigning tasks to team members easy.
Slack – This is also a tool that enhances team communication. It makes working with people anywhere in the world easy.
GoCo – This is a tool that acts as your HR department. It handles different aspects of personnel management from onboarding to off-boarding and many more.
Hootsuite – This is a tool that helps you manage your different social media accounts. Of course, you know how important marketing is to your business. This is one tool that makes that easy.
The few tools mentioned above do not even begin to scratch the surface of tools available today. However, with these, you can get your business running smoothly and then add any other ones you may need as your business grows or evolves.
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