5 Tools that Help Businesses Focus on Growth

Tools are vital to growth. Without the right tools, no business can thrive in any particular industry.

The simplification of the day-to-day task of running a business has always been one of the primary goals of any business owner. Most people don’t go into business to be saddled down with phone calls, emails, and schedules. Good or bad, automation has had a profound effect on both the economy as well as the tasks that entrepreneurs loathe handling.

Automation and simplification tools are useful in daily life that stems far beyond the walls of your business. Companies like Uber and Airbnb have taken an otherwise-unregulated mess and turned it into a success story for users and owners alike.

So how do we simplify our processes within the business instead? Much like with the above companies, we’ll need to look at processes that could use some simplification and find 21st-century solutions to common problems. Here are five tools that help businesses stop running errands and start focusing on growth.

1.Scheduling Tools

Schedules are often a messy affair.

Employees work on specific schedules and will need periodic time off for events and personal matters. Prospective customers and clients will need to meet with leadership and founders, and may often change up the meeting times at the last minute. There are several meetings throughout the day between staff, teams, management, and any combination of the three.

Without proper software, scheduling can be a mess.

Keeping your schedule in one place and with the easy ability to alter it is something that any business needs. Software like Planday or Google Calendar can keep your timesheet cloud-based, and even allow your employees to request and trade shifts and days entirely without needing to physically ask management.

Whether you’re going with Planday, Google Calendar, or any of the other options available on the market, scheduling tools make the workday more efficient and less focused on the frustrating task of rescheduling.

2.Outreach Tools

Cultivating a product like that best appeals to your audience is one thing—but reaching that audience is another task entirely.

A sales funnel and email list can be a good thing, but running the list of recipients, handling an influx of subscriptions and requests to unsubscribe, and curating the content each week can be severely limiting to productivity.

Instapage, Leadpages, Tango…all of these companies offer software that can automate the process of outreach and send your message out to anyone willing to receive it.

Google Forms and SurveyMonkey are also good avenues to pursue outreach. A good survey connected to an email list can gain you proper and immediate feedback for your marketing campaign and strategies. With this immediate insight, you can adjust accordingly, tighten up your outreach, and fix the problem before the next email has even sent.

Outreach tools make self-marketing a breeze and can turn even the most novice of entrepreneurs into their a marketing guru. All you’ll have to do is assemble the content, work with the software of choice, and hit send.

3. Automation Tools

General automation tools that don’t apply to specific aspects of your business remain an under-discussed aspect of running a business.

Think about small processes that require human intervention to take place. Perhaps you have to update a spreadsheet each time you get an email from a certain entity or need to send collected information to a third party to process it.

Software that’s designed with versatility in mind can take simple tasks and remove the need for human oversight. If This, Then That (IFTTT) is a great example of such software. If you need to send off a report each Monday, for instance, then tell IFTTT the parameters for action. If it is Monday and the report is in the right location, then IFTTT would automatically send it off to the right person.

Such a simple tool has such a wide range of uses. The sky is the limit with automation tools, and you’d be surprised by just how much doesn’t need a helping hand.

4. Accounting Tools

Collecting information about the business's finances can mean counting out dollars from registers, busting out the calculator, and settling in for a long evening of number crunching.

That is if you don’t consider an accounting service.

Software like Freshbooks, Quicken, and others provide a singular cloud-based location for you to update whenever money shifts hands. Most accounting software can instantly generate reports for the week or month, inform you of deficits and surpluses, and even generate spreadsheets for accountants to manage at the end of the quarter.

Accounting software (much like other tools we’ve recommended on this list) can also be utilized with automation software like IFTTT to simplify the process and automatically generate reports and lists.

With almost every type of product connected to the Internet these days, with the right software, the money can count itself.

5.Administrative Tools

On the subject of finances, one of the biggest problem areas for companies remains the need to keep up with payroll, employee training, labor requirements, and other administrative tasks. Hiring an administrative manager (or two) tends to be the simplest solution for many, but not all businesses can afford another seat in the office. This is where PEOs come in handy.

What is a PEO? Personal employer organizations (PEOs) provide tools for businesses to manage their administrative duties as required by law—as well as offer consultation services and handle many aspects of the requirements for you.

Utilizing a PEO service, your business can focus on short-term and long-term growth without needing to ensure administrative requirements are met. Bringing on a new entity like a PEO can be a nerve-wracking experience, but with over 150,000 companies utilizing similar services to manage the financials, there are several options to choose from and plans to pick from.

Conclusion

Whether you’re going to hire an organization to solve the problem of administrative management or simply use IFTT to automate a few emails, there are several tools available for business owners and business management professionals to trim the fat and keep the business focused on continued success.

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