In smaller businesses, you often struggle with the management of certain aspects, ones that require specific knowledge or training. As a tech company you are likely familiar with industry-specific tools such as this BOM tool from Sourcengine to help you source your electronic components, but what about the other aspects of business operations like bookkeeping and marketing? Thankfully, there is plenty of software available for small businesses to help with all the departments that they may find difficult to operate.
- Accounting
The finances for a business can stretch from invoicing to wages to tax returns and managing the accounts requires a good understanding of the financial world. You also need a record of your income and your outgoings in order to track profits – one aspect you probably don’t consider when you are looking for accounting software is an expense tracker, check out the expense tracker at FreshBooks here that you can connect directly to your bank account so you never miss out on a penny of those business expenses when it comes to your tax returns.
- Communication Relationship Management
A CRM software tool can help you analyse and track your interactions with your clients to better understand your relationship with them. As a small business, maintaining and nurturing these relationships is vital for the survival of your company. CRM software can also help with tracking your interactions with potential customers and provide valuable data that will help drive sales and increase customer retention. Tools like Zoho can provide an invaluable insight into your customer relationships and identify where you can improve as a business.
- Marketing
The growth of your company is largely down to your marketing efforts. Whilst quality service and customer care is important to build your reputation, marketing is essential to bring in new customers and maintain your positive reputation amongst your client base. In addition to the more traditional forms of marketing, digital marketing has been taking the industry by storm. MailChimp is a popular option for email marketing and offers a free service with the opportunity to grow as your business does. HubSpot offers a choice between CRM focused, sales orientated or full-fledged marketing software to help automate your marketing efforts and take a huge amount of stress off your shoulders. These are just a couple of options for marketing software as you can also find services that focus on print marketing, SEO or social media marketing. Do your research into what type of marketing might be the best investment for your company and which method is the best way to reach your customer base.
- Project Management
Good project management software can prove to be invaluable to your company, it can help break down big projects into individual manageable tasks whilst also providing an overall view of the bigger picture. It can be essential for your time management and tracking your progress through each project, as well as giving insight into where your resources are being expended. Some project management software can be linked with timekeeping or invoicing software to streamline the entire process and aid your communication with your clients.
