If you’re a new business owner, it can be overwhelming figuring out how to streamline all of your tasks. After all, you have your employees to hire and manage, payroll, project management, social media posting, and on top of all of that–growing your business. Luckily, we live in a modern era where there are plenty of tools that can be leveraged to help advance your company. Check out some of our top picks for business management software below.
Ideation tools
If you’re at square one with your business, there are quite a few details to iron out before you can start functioning as a productive company. With that said, there’s software like Squad Help, which guides you toward finding the perfect name for your book, product, service, or app.
Squad Help uses the power of crowdsourcing to engage thousands of experts who will help craft your name. The cost is within most startup budgets at just $199 per naming contest.
In addition to Squad Help, which helps you nail down an essential part of your business identity, there’s other apps that help you get through the growing pains phase of your startup. Clarity connects you with thought leaders in a variety of industries who will point you to your answers. Whether you have questions about the best way to grow your business, ways to raise capital for a new venture, or how to keep your business skills sharp, Clarity connects you via phone so you can talk to knowledgeable experts. Only $1 per minute!
TMS System
If you run any kind of business that utilizes freight or vehicles, using transportation management software (TMS) can provide the boost your company needs to run more efficiently. What is a TMS system? It’s software designed to streamline shipping and logistics, reduce your overall operational costs, and improve your supply chain visibility. Areas where TMS tools can assist your business operations include:
- Shipping
- Procurement
- Route planning
- Route optimization
- Audits
- Payments
- Order and supply chain visibility
- Carrier management
- Freight rating and shopping
- Operations
- Load building
- Management of shipping yard
HR Software
One of the most time-consuming tasks for new business is hiring and managing employees. With automated HR tools, however, you can save hours of time and paperwork. HR software can help you create and send offer letters to new candidates, build organizational charts detailing reporting relationships, manage paid time off requests, stay compliant, and set your team up with all the training documents they need to be successful.
Some HR software services even includes the ability to send out anonymous surveys so you can get feedback and find out what your team needs using a method your team feels comfortable using.
Have a question about HR? Some types of software boast the ability to deliver HR advice on demand.
Marketing Email Software
Staying in touch with your client base is crucial but with a normal email provider, it’s difficult to send out large amounts of emails. Using services like Drip, however, can help you with email segmenting, marketing automation tools, list groups, and building out your workflow.
Project Management
If you have a lot of projects to manage, there are plenty of free tools you can use online that will make your day more streamlined and productive. Workzone, for example allows you to create personalized, individual to-do lists, create subtasks, task dependencies, set permissions for certain users, quickly see statuses, and assign people to multiple tasks.
If you’re more of a visual person, you might enjoy using Trello. It uses a very simple task management layout that allows you to create unlimited task lists, share files, share images, organize lists by dates, organize by priority, and allows for both comments and collaboration.
Final thoughts: Building your business doesn’t have to be impossible
The right tools to help grow your business are already at your fingertips. After you’ve started the initial phases of building your company, there are several steps after that still need to be completed. And with helpful software tools, you can focus on your important tasks instead of feeling bogged down by paperwork and other rote activities that eat away at your day. When you’re ready to launch a new business, keep this list handy so you can focus on what’s important.
