If you run a small business, you’ll know that anything that can help you to save time and money is worth its weight in gold.
Today’s all in one small business software combines CRM, document storage, invoicing, marketing automation, scheduling, and more. We round up below the tech solutions and software that could help your business run more efficiently while also boosting your bottom line.
Project Management Tools
Project management software can up-level productivity and help you to ensure that tasks make the best use of available resources. This type of tool allows you to track every element of a project digitally so that you can stay on top of your to-do list, set reminders, schedule updates, and enables slicker communication and collaboration with your team and between individual staff members.
For small businesses particularly, project management software offers important automation features: the tool can be used to run, for example, human resources processes or to schedule and post updates to your social media platform as required – this not only saves you time but money, too, in terms of staff costs, and ensures compliance, too.
POS Systems
Utilizing a high-quality POS (point of sale) system is an important way of optimizing your virtual and in-person ordering, check-out, and payment processing systems. A POS system covers both physical equipment, such as cash registers and hand-held card readers, and the online processes a business uses to take orders and payments from their customers, such as the virtual basket and check-out page on the website.
There are lots of different types of POS systems out there, so taking some time to make sure you choose the best one for your business needs is likely to pay dividends. A great POS system will boost the perceived professionalism of your company while making the payment process smoother for your clients; it can also be used to manage inventory and to automate elements of ordering and shipping, for example.
So, whether it’s the best POS system for the pizza shop that you’re looking for, allowing your diners to easily customize their meals by adding toppings and choosing their preferred base, or you want to find a system that will automatically generate a supplier order when your inventory is running low of a particular craft item, you’ll be able to quickly find the right option for your business.
CRM Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a useful tool that can help your business to find new customers while retaining an existing audience. A CRM system will allow you to keep track of a client’s journey from their very first contact with your company, saving you time and money in comparison with monitoring this manually, and also gives you the tools to help keep these clients engaged long-term.
One of the most valuable things that CRM software can deliver is in-depth insights and analytics regarding customer behavior, meaning that you can accurately gauge the success of marketing campaigns or interrogate demographics. This data can be used to target key clients or customer groups with follow-up messages or to design promotions with a certain audience in mind – meaning you’ll get more bang for your marketing buck.
Conferencing and Scheduling Tools
Meetings are frequently cited by staff as the leading office time-waster, meaning that they may be costing your small business big in time and money. Get on top of this by using conferencing and scheduling tools to ensure that meetings are always productive while being less time-consuming, too: win, win.
Scheduling tools get things off on the right foot by making the planning of meetings less of a hassle: rather than the endless back, and forth of chain emails, you can simply share your calendar with colleagues so that individuals can choose the time slot that best suits them.
Conferencing and scheduling tools can also often allow you to reserve meeting rooms and attach details such as agendas and any relevant information that will be pertinent to the discussion. Virtual meetings can be enabled using this solution, so wherever your workforce is, getting together will be easier than ever before.
Time Keeping Solutions
And finally, a user-friendly time-keeping tool can help you to manage your workflow, figure out your hourly rate, and keep a track of the length of time that each project takes so that you can analyze productivity and assist you in staying on top of deadlines.
This type of solution is perfect for freelancers or small businesses and is great for optimizing planning, balancing workloads, and for scheduling and collaboration of tasks. Options are available that allow you to create a visual timeline of tasks or projects that can be easily adjusted as needed.
Most time-keeping solutions are lightweight and easy to use, so you and your team can get started straight away without the need for extensive training.
Optimizing Your Processes to Save Money
All of the above tech solutions are tried and tested methods that businesses use to save both time and money – many of them also promote better engagement with customers and retention rates. Choose the ones that will work best for your business, and get started with saving today!
