When entrepreneurs decide to begin a startup, one of those self-employed job ideas that are exciting, there is always some degree of stress over the sacrifices one may need to make. The main concern most entrepreneurs find themselves stressing over is maintaining low costs for their company in general.
Keeping in mind that certain costs are simply unavoidable, you as a business person will still seek out tools to help ease the burden of running everything within a company, and this is where tools that help your startup come in.
The startup failure rate is 90% due to the lack of pursuit in things that are more than just an idea, so these following tools are sure to aid in ensuring the survival of your business, though it has to also appeal to a certain public per se.
There are hundreds of tools to choose from, with companies all around the globe utilizing them to maintain seamless workflow between employees and smooth business operations. Here you will find the most important and useful ones organized neatly into one place.
Software And Tools For Startups
Management Tools
Firstly, there are project management tools that help everyone from employees to employers on organizing their business projects. This is one of those tools that help you especially when the project is high performance and needs better efficiency to succeed.
So what do project management tools do exactly?
This type of software assists individuals or teams in organizing their tasks within a project effectively, something a project manager would be doing otherwise using similar software.
The positive to these tools is the low cost and the option for customization to fit the exact needs of a project depending on the size of the team and their goals.
The features these tools hold are usually first and foremost planning and scheduling for tasks, subtasks, calendars, workflows, and so on. They also allow for collaboration through common tasks, the ability to add comments, organize together, and approve changes.
They also aid in documentation, so nothing can go missing since it is digital, and allow for editing, versioning, and looking back at the change history. Lastly, they help you with the evaluation of tasks, productivity, growth, and so much more.
To organize your work, find certain business apps to help make it easier, for example, a professional email to communicate with staff, vendors, and stakeholders, as well as a separate one to communicate with customers.
You should also be utilizing cloud storage to save your official files and documents into one place from anywhere, rendering it remotely accessible for your employees as well.
Productivity tools also help in managing everything, like Microsoft 365 or Google workspace to set time trackers and such for you.
Website Tools
No matter how hard you try, you need to have a website for your business since that is the only way in this modern world that customers can find out more about your company other than maybe word of mouth. Having a clear, aesthetically pleasing website draws in customers from all corners, so do not skimp on one.
The tools for website building in question are platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, etc. These sites either teach you how to make your website or aid you in making it. You also have the option of learning HTML, CSS, the DOM, and other languages to do it yourself.
Consider whether you will be having customers pay through the site, or whether you need some content management. You should also consider the nature of your business, and build a website suitable for it. Also, remember to teach your team to manage the website platform unless they already know how to do so.
Customers Come First
It is extremely important to give customers a pleasant experience when interacting with your company. To help maintain customer satisfaction, you as an entrepreneur can use customer relationship management (CRM) software to monitor how well you’re doing.
CRM software essentially provides businesses with a central place where they can store customer and prospect data, follow customer interactions, and share said information with colleagues, in other words, it manages relationships off of data to help your business grow and stay in touch with your customer base.
This type of software is also extremely customer-centric, as your business should usually be as well.
Accounting And Finance
No matter what, accounting must be executed somehow. With accounting being so crucial, some business owners have decided to use cloud-based accounting programs, though paying an accountant is never the wrong option.
These digital accounting apps all import your transactions and record your processes with functional modules, so forget about spreadsheets, tears, or finding out what data entry 10 key is.
As for finance, one must always strike a balance. Record the source of your revenue, where it is going, and draw up the probable future trajectory for your startup.
Being organized and appearing with calculated numbers will make your startup seem attractive to investors. There are also platforms to find investors, for example, Foundersuite, which offers CRM tools to manage your investor funnel, as well as spreadsheets for various things like pitch decks. If you have a product-making business, it is essential to keep track of stock, raw materials, components, and manufacturing processes. Using dedicated MRP software helps you better plan, automate and streamline your resources. You can integrate it with your e-commerce platform, accounting tool, and shipping app to gain complete visibility of your operations.
No matter what, focus on your path to success and the versatility of the platforms you use for it. Try using apps that have multiple services in one, the way banking apps offer movie tickets and loans, not just card transactions.
In addition, try finding tools that offer a price per user, to save money for other projects. It will be hard, but if you succeed it will all be worth the struggle.
