Even the most mundane day-to-day business activities could drain your resources and time. They can weigh down your operations, preventing you from moving at the speed you want to operate and responding to market dynamics with due agility.
But the right tech resources can streamline your processes and deliver significant efficiency and productivity gains. They can free up your team to do what they do best and help you run a leaner, more fluid business that can scale faster. Here are the must-have tools and services for you to achieve all these.
Slack
Communication is one of the most critical ingredients for your business to operate smoothly, both internally and externally. But when you use multiple mediums, communicating with various groups of stakeholders could be time-consuming, not to mention inefficient.
But Slack helps you tackle this issue with its collaborative communication platform. It allows you to create different channels for each work stream, team, or project to organize conversations more effectively. You can share photos, images, voice clips, and videos, integrate other apps, and search conversation archives to trace back what was discussed. Paid plans even allow you to collaborate with customers, suppliers, and other external parties on Slack.
The platform currently offers three paid subscriptions. Pro and Business+ costs $7.25 and $12.50 per person per month when you opt for yearly billing. Enterprise Grid is for more complex businesses, and the cost varies based on your needs.
FreshBooks
This popular accounting software is feature-packed and designed to help all types of businesses. It equips you to create professional invoices, automate client payments, track expenses, and check your enterprise’s financial data in real time.
The mobile app and cloud-based features make it easily accessible from anywhere and at any time. FreshBooks is also designed to integrate with over 100 apps—from WooCommerce to Shopify—extending its versatility and usability.
The software is available on four different plans—Lite, Plus, Premium, and Select. The annual plans start at $132.60 with 50% off for the first six months and a 10% additional discount. FreshBooks also offers a 30-day free trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee for your peace of mind.
Asana
This software can help you manage all project-related workflows on a single platform and integrate automation tools for improved efficiency. According to its website, Asana can decrease 38% of time spent on admin tasks, increase on-time completion by 34%, and deliver 42% faster execution.
Some of its features include assigning tasks, managing permissions, monitoring progress, and building custom visualizations. It also supports over 200 integrations and uses two-factor authentication, SSO, and SAML 2.0 to protect your data.
You can access Asana’s basic plan for free, while the Premium and Business packages offer advanced features for $10.99 and $24.99 per month, respectively, on annual subscriptions.
Zendesk
Running a customer help desk is a complex task. It requires substantial manpower to handle time-critical activities that could ultimately have a direct impact on your sales and long-term business growth.
Zendesk helps you streamline all the tedious processes involved with serving your customers. It allows you to track and organize tickets, set up a help desk for self-service, initiate voice calls, solve issues faster with AI and automation, analyze data to create actionable reports, and do much more. The platform is also customizable and supports integrations.
There are four Zendesk Suite pricing plans with different features. But don’t forget to check the demo and trials before determining which subscription to choose.
Google Workspaces
Previously known as G Suite, Google Workspaces is not just about Google Slides and Sheets. It brings together a range of tools to improve your business’s productivity, collaboration, and creativity. Workspaces tools and services include Gmail, Meet, Calendar, Chat, Keep, Forms, and more.
Paid plans offer secure custom emails, video meetings with 100 or more participants, additional storage, security and management controls, and several other features. The Business Starter, Pro, and Plus packages are available for $6, $12, and $18 per user per month with a one-year commitment. There is also a more advanced Enterprise option, for which you must contact the sales team for a quote.
Mailchimp
Email marketing is highly cost-effective and can deliver, on average, $36 for every $1 spent. But organizing your databases, designing templates, and sending out hundreds of emails at the right time could be a time-consuming process that can quickly erode your ROI.
Mailchimp allows you to streamline all your email campaign activities with a suite of tested features. For example, you can build customer journeys and automate email triggers to remind shoppers of abandoned carts, cross-sell products, engage customers, and take them through the sales funnel. Pre-designed templates help you create personalized emails based on customer behavior, while intelligent predictions let you sharpen your insights and target buyers more precisely.
Mailchimp is available for free with limited features. The advanced solutions are offered under three plans, starting at $13 per month.
Leadar
Without accurate lead databases, you won’t have a sufficient prospect pipeline to nurture and convert into sales. So, sourcing sales leads is one task you don’t want to compromise. But researching, verifying, and collating data and building contact lists can consume countless hours.
Leadar can help you simplify your prospect list-building process. It is a free sales intelligent platform with over 110 million US profiles containing various critical data—from names, contact details, and social media to education and career information.
The platform’s proprietary algorithms and AI technology ensure accurate and up-to-date data, which you can search by name, location, job title, and a variety of other profiling factors.
Apart from sourcing new leads, Leadar is also excellent for checking the accuracy of existing contact data and finding missing pieces of information for incomplete fields.
To Conclude
By streamlining your business processes, you can fast-track your enterprise’s growth potential with significant efficiencies and savings. The tools and services we have recommended in this article will help you achieve improvements in different areas of your operations—from communications, email marketing, lead generation, and customer services to accounting and project management. But before signing up for any paid plans, remember to assess their fees and services and try out free trials and demos.
Disclaimer: All prices and information are accurate at the time of publishing this article.
