Business today is more automated than manual, with the emergence of business technology. Business Automation, also known as Business Process Automation or BPA, allows professionals. It strengthens their key relationships and makes the required differentiation in the marketplace. In other words, business automation theoretically is advantageous for gearing the medium and large brands.
It is very much effective in small business management. The business technology tools are very much the underlying leads for pulling up small businesses worldwide. With start-ups and small businesses, the crucial setbacks are time and money. This is where business technology tools come in need. This article provides an insight into the 7 most beneficial business technology tools to save time and money.
Business Technology Tools saving Time and Money today
Business technology may be termed as an aggregate of the science, data, business, engineering applications. It aims at achieving economic and organizational goals.
The era of business technology dates back to the 1650s. It is also known as the Agrarian-Nomadic period when the first phase took place at that time; technology meant food harvesting with human-made tools. Followed by a second phase, the Agrarian period which dated until the 1900s. It focused on advanced food harvesting options through the usage of plough and tractor.
The third phase is popularly known as the Industrial period. It was there till around the 1960s. The emphasis was on making mechanized tools with steam and engine such as coal, water, and steam to power technological tools. The fourth phase, Service, dates until 1975 when aiming was towards the growth and development of computers.
The fifth phase, Information, focused on early internet services and the development of applications such as Microsoft Office. The next phase, called the Semantic is present until today. It focuses on networking with the addition of smartphones and social media.
Hence the need for making the business worthwhile and remarkable is necessary. That is where the need for business technology tools come into play. Here are some of them explained.
1. Task Management Tools
These tools are beneficial for their cost-effectiveness and easy operation. The usage of intelligence software makes it ideal for small business owners to keep a digital track of their tasks at hand. The employees and the employer/s get a sufficient amount of time in hand to communicate between themselves regarding the progress of the project.
These tools help to keep track of work done as well as the goals reached. It will also help to keep you ahead of the game by setting automatic updates and friendly reminders. As a collaborative tool, these business technology tools will help the whole team by assigning them appropriate jobs. It makes your business stand out.
Recommended task management tools for you are
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monday.com
the highly customizable tool, providing good collaboration features. It is cloud-hosted, open API and web-based tool supported on devices such as Windows, Mac, iPhone/ iPad, and android.
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Backlog
A code management tool, which helps in assigning, tracking and releasing codes besides regular project works. It has certain visual features like Gantt charts and burndown charts that optimizes and tracks your workflow in general.
Backlog
2. Email and Social Marketing tools
Using the email marketing system can come in handy while helping your email and social marketing aspects. It automates the emails social marketing strategies. As a business technology tool, it helps the subscribers of your website updated with newsletters and other important deals, promotions and offers.
This tool automatically makes updates on different social media platforms linked to your website. It, therefore, keeps you off the burden of manually posting updates on every social media.
Recommended email and social marketing tools are
one of the best-known marketing automation platforms. Its recent launch of a free email marketing tool helps you to get access to tools. It helps you to create a centralised database, organizing it and keeping track of email performance.
HubSpot Email Marketing
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Sender Email Marketing
It is a free email marketing tool. A striking feature of this tool is that it can create stunning newsletters without the business owners knowing HTML. It steals the first place as a business technology tool because of its robust technology.
3. Social Media Scheduling Tool
As a business technology tool, focusing on saving time and money, it helps to connect with prospective clients and customers with greater ease easily.
It automatically schedules the timing of the posts to be made online as well as the frequency, by writing the posts all at once and scheduling it for weeks or even months at times. This reduces the unwanted drainage of time on social media. You can apply that time more effectively towards the progress of the business.
Recommended social media scheduling tools are
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Hootsuite
A free social media scheduling and marketing tool, it helps to display all the data in several streams. Its built-in teamwork features are beneficial for collaborating with team members, receiving in-depth reports and also scheduling posts.
Hootsuite
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Buffer
It has the required analytics tools tracking audience activity and figuring out the time for future posts. Its chrome extension integrates everything without getting in the way. It is therefore regarded as the best business technology tool for post schedules and managing the social media presence.
Buffer
4. Scheduling Meetings Tool
Scheduling is a critical part of the design and development process. Holding meetings with stakeholders, graphic designers, teammates, investors, etc. is an essential part of owning a business, big or small. It isn’t easy to get everyone on the same page at once. Scheduling the meetings beforehand reduces the chaos caused otherwise.
Recommended scheduled meeting tools are
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Calendly
Probably the most time saving and business-friendly tool. It configures several variations of meetings, providing automated sync with your calendars. It also provides an easy interface for others to schedule the necessary meetings.
Calendly
The first step is to fill up the customizable form and select the time that works best for all. Calendly handles further by sending emails both to you and the one who requested the meeting to be held, sending the invitation at the right time based on time zones, It also makes sure that meetings don’t overlap. Too many meetings on a single day are also taken care of.
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Doodle
It essentially boosts your productivity by keeping your mind off useless schedules and emails. As a free app, it provides a quick poll of candidates available online to schedule meetings with. Scheduling is made easier with this tool. With the fast pacing business technology worldwide, it is important to catch up on every necessary detail. Doodle helps by simply selecting the date and time of the schedules.
Doodle
5. Obtaining e-signatures
Obtaining e-signatures for documents, agreements and contracts are essential. Hence one needs to upload the document, noting the appropriate place where the signature would go on the document, followed by adding the right email address. The e-signature tools do the rest of the jobs.
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DocuSign
It is a signature tool readily available online. It manages the complete document signing procedure, including workflow, collaboration, authentication and storage security. This tool encrypts the signatures made online and maintains a complete audit. However, the contents of the agreement cannot be changed once the e-signatures are made.
DocuSign
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Adobe Sign
Being the first-ever software to make e-signatures available, it is a cloud-based service. Its services include requesting e-signatures, tracking email responses and notifications, and creating a workflow to gather several signatures from multi-users.
Adobe Sign
6. Finding and Retaining Business Clients
Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a widely used platform for finding and retaining clients. It helps the business owners to keep track of the current and previous customers, while simultaneously focusing on potential customers.
This business technology tool is beneficiary for solidifying business decisions and reaching a common viewpoint. The definite data points are used to make contacts with the customers that have come and gone in a certain time period. This helps to know the target group to whom the rest of the business referrals are to be sent.
Recommended business technology tools for finding and retaining clients are
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Salesforce CRM
An on-demand cloud-based software, salesforce CRM is best suited for small and medium businesses. It is capable of contact management, automated marketing, management lead helping enterprises to manage customer accounts, track leads in sales, conduct and monitor marketing campaigns as well as provide post-sale service.
Salesforce CRM
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HubSpot CRM
Released in 2014, this free tool had caused a complete change in the wind of the business world. Most suitable for small enterprises because of its simplicity. It provides a live chat option, the addition of unlimited users alongside the entire team. It also provides automatic tracking customer interactions and providing insights on the behaviour of customers.
HubSpot CRM
7. Document Collaboration
While collaborating with others, everyone must be on the same page. This even goes for the documents that are provided. Everyone must be looking for the same version of a document. This prevents the hindrance caused by either the same version of similar documents or different versions of the same document.
Later addition of the documents done if required to. Collaboration helps to minimize office finances, commute timings and also unnecessary office meetings. Hence document collaboration increases productivity, helps in brainstorming ideas, enhances creativity, fasten idea execution and problem-solving.
Recommended document collaboration tools are
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Google Docs
This is one of the most widely used, simplest forms of business technology tools that help in stress-free document collaboration. The build of this tool ensures easy collaboration with teammates and even clients at times. This is completely cost-effective.
Google Docs
All a person needs to do is make a Gmail id or account and move on with the further exploration of the tool. However, with increasing members in a group, it becomes important and complex when documents need permission from the lead to access it.
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Confluence
As a collaboration tool, the confluence is the second most reliable option for small teams after the google docs. Members of a team can share the pdf, images, documents, while still keeping track of every change made on the page while connecting to the rest of the team members.
Confluence
The team members have the ability to file and page comments, leave feedback without getting lost in email threads or chat messages. Team members can pin their comments on the shared files, adding their suggestions or feedback, editing office files right from their personal Confluence dashboards.
Concluding
Business and technology are embracing each other for furthering the advances for a better future. This article provided an insight into the readily accessible business technology tools that are reliable for starting a new business. Time and money constraints today make everything, and everyone relies heavily on the digital world.
It is advantageous for the growing business world. With new brands being launched every day worldwide, business technology is essential for meeting the growing needs readily. To make sure such advances help in strengthening relationships, these tools would be beneficial. I hope this article serves the needs of growing entrepreneurs.
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