Running a small business is no easy task. You have to be versatile and flexible if you want your venture to be successful. You might be the manager one day and a bookkeeper the next. The roles just keep on changing. The key to getting it all done effectively is to work smart, not hard.
A smart entrepreneur is one who knows when to delegate and not just to people.
Times are changing. We are living in the most technologically advanced era and there are a ton of tools and apps easily available that can help you. And, some don’t even cost a penny. We suggest you make the most of it.
We’ve curated a list of 10 mobile apps great for small businesses to help you out.
Best For Hiring: Upward
Speaking of delegating, you might want to hire some staff to ensure smooth running. Hiring is a long process and can be time-consuming. To get the best employees you need to make your job listings stand out. Use Upward to make your job easier. It makes posting job listing and sorting through applicants easy.
Best For Team Communication: Slack
One of the most popular apps on the market for team communication is Slack. You can create channels and groups for each project, of each team or whatever way you want to organize your communication. What we found helpful was that the app makes it easy to customize notifications. It automatically indexes and archives the messages allowing you to search and filter easily. It also allows you to share images and PDFs with its drag-and-drop feature.
If you’re looking for a budget-friendly option, you’d be happy to learn that it is free. You can add as many users as you want for no additional cost. If you want more features though, like SMM panel app integration and unlimited searches, you’ll have to upgrade and pay up.
Best For General Productivity: Evernote
Evernote is great for note-taking and planning. With this app on your phone, you won’t miss out on any of the great ideas that flood your mind at odd hours. The best thing about this app is that it allows you to store your ideas through voice, photo as well as text. It also allows you to clip bits of information from the web to the store. Not to forget, you can also search your notes using tags and keywords. The basic plan is free, so go ahead and test it out.
Best For Time Tracking: RescueTime
Speaking about productivity, you might want to keep tabs on where you’re spending your time. RescueTime is great for this purpose. It tracks which website and apps you spend most of your time on and gives you a detailed report on your activities. It notifies you if you spend too much time on a certain activity and also blocks distracting websites to help you focus. If you need some discipline in your schedule, we’d recommend you download RescueTime.
Best For Project Management: Asana
If you’re wondering where you can collaborate easily, look no further. Simply download Asana. This lets you view all the tasks assigned to your team members. You can set deadlines and see how far they’ve progressed. You can also converse with your team on those tasks and get updates. The app also makes sharing documents and notes easy. You can easily integrate Asana with all the other apps you might be using like Slack, which makes this platform all the more appealing. Bear in mind though, the free version only gets you, 15 users.
Best For Cloud Computing: Microsoft OneDrive
Another great tool that helps you collaborate effectively is Microsoft OneDrive. All businesses need cloud computing to stay ahead of the game and if you’re new to the market, just starting out, we’d recommend you get OneDrive.
Cloud storage and file-sharing through synced folders ensure you’re all on the same page. Team members can edit files along the way on their phones, tablets or PCs, whatever they find suitable.
Of course, when it comes to working on a cloud, the internet speed of a user is important. To get the best results you need a fast internet connection. If you’re confused about which service would suit your needs best, BuyTVInternetPhone could help you out.
Know Your Customers: SurveyMonkey
Starting off includes a lot of trial and error. Everything you do, every change you make is scrutinized so that it can be perfected. Feedback is of utmost importance as is research about your target audience. For this, we’d recommend you use SurveyMonkey.
You can create surveys to get insight into what your customers want. You can measure user engagement and get feedback on different aspects of your product like pricing, etc.
Best For Customer Relationship Management: Streak
All businesses could do with a customer relationship management (CRM) app. This can be quite a time-consuming exercise otherwise.
Streak is a great CRM tool that easily integrates with other Google apps you might be using. It helps you organize your contact by helping you track which stage of business relationship are they at. Are you about to pitch them your service or seal the deal? Streak organizes your clients based on these metrics. It then arranges all the emails and files you exchanged with them and helps you keep on top of it all through its newsfeed.
The app’s basic plan is free to use. The catch though is, it only allows up to five users. If you’re just starting off though, it’s great.
Best For Accounting: Freshbooks
Freshbooks base plan starts at $15 and allows you to manage up to five clients. It is a little pricey no doubt, but we guarantee it’ll pay off.
The app allows you to see your cash flow, expenses, and invoices easily on your phone or computer. You can generate personalize invoices based on estimates. It also lets you set up automatic billing. It is easy to use and integrates PayPal among other apps.
Best For Accepting Payments: Square
How can we forget accepting money? If you have a limited budget to invest in the payment system, we’d recommend you sign up with a square.
You can easily connect a small card-reader to your phone or tablet and use that to swipe credit cards. The fact that you don’t need an internet connection is a definite plus. You can email or text the receipts. The downside though is that you end up paying 2.75% per swipe.
Wrapping Up
We hope this article helped answer your queries. Let us know which app you use and why. Drop a message below so that the community learns with you.
Author Bio:
Abdul Sami Hameed is the Digital Marketer, who love to actively work and loves sharing his knowledge with the Marketing Community. When he is not working, you can find him gaming with his friends, or listening to motivational stuff. You can email him at abdulsamihameed@gmail.com