Tools For Your Business
It is so easy to become overwhelmed with all the things that you need to do in your business.
When you are self-employed, it is hard not to always feel too busy. My key advice is to try and keep things as simple as possible, more with less and do the important stuff better. I know this can be very hard to do at times!
There are literally 70 plus new tools and products released on to the market everyday, so you might have thought it should be easy to save time and improve your business. I think in reality it is hard for most of us to identify what is well intended sales hype and what would really make a difference.
I suggest you start with five key tools and look to utilise them to their full potential:
- Website – To be able to be found
- Point of Sale POS and linked with a CRM – To manage client comms
- Cloud Accounting – To manage costs, sales and reports
- Document Storage & Project Management – To manage your business info & jobs
- Staff Scheduling Tools – To manage rosters & human resources
As well as these essentials, there are a few technical tools that each business should include, specific to what they do. I.e. restaurants – recipe software; manufacturer- inventory management software; recruiter- psychometric testing software; etc.
When you have this foundational infrastructure in place, it really will make your business more resilient and easier to manage at a much higher level.
I also think the addition of a few fun tools may give you an edge and should be encouraged.
These do not replace the foundational “must have” tools mentioned above, but they can feel interesting and exciting and produce great results.
I have pick five apps for you to consider:
Micropayments and no fee services
buymeacoffee.com
You can send or embed a link to a potential customer and once it is clicked on, they can pay you the equivalent of a coffee $3, $4 or $5, without fees.
Making Audio communications – This is so cool!
descript.com
This is a podcast tool that, when you connect your mic and hit record, takes your audio and turns it into text. When you edit the text, it also edits the audio and it is so easy.
New feature: Overdub, when you add new words into the text, it uses your own recording to create a synthesised version of your voice that is so good, people will think it’s you. This is awesome.
Need to lighten things up with your branded messaging – This is quick and easy
brandgifs.com
This site will give you a free sample trial and then allows you to make 10 different images for different situations for a reasonable fee. It is great and can really work for brand marketing. A gif carries an emotional message better than text or a static picture. Imagine you are a little café and you send a gif to your regular customers showing the pleasure of someone receiving that coffee hit. Or if you run a bar and you send a gif inviting all your customers to have fun at tonight’s happy hour?
Adding commentary onto someone else’s video
mashlink.io
There are dozens of uses for this tool, be it training, marketing, fun or giving feedback. This is really easy to use and a great communication tool. There is no editing! But the ability to “news cast” in real time on someone else’s video feed. A cool tool and great to bring some fun into your business – your customers and your staff will respond positively to this less conventional approach.
Summarising large amounts of reading
optimozor.herokuapp.com
If you need to summarise notes or review large scripts to quickly get the main points, use this amazing tool. It can also translate or correct essays or assignments which could give you just the advantage you are looking for. Many of us have work places where we have non-English speaking colleagues and this tool could help.