Every entrepreneur needs a range of secret weapons on their belt. If you’re going to get ahead as an entrepreneur, it’s important to set yourself apart from the competition, and the only way to do that is to use everything at your disposal to gain a competitive advantage. Luckily, there are a range of tools out there that aim to make things easier for business owners. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the top 10 best tools for entrepreneurs in 2023.
Accounting and finance software
It can be incredibly difficult to keep track of your business finances on your own, which is why you need to download a good accounting program to help you. Think about it; when you’re taking out mortgage loans to help you pay for your house, you don’t just rely on your bank statements and memory to make repayments, so why should you do that for your business? There are plenty of great accounting software packages out there, but QuickBooks tends to be the favoured app for most entrepreneurs.
Project management software
Just like accounting, project management can quickly overwhelm you if you don’t keep track of it closely. There are lots of apps available for project management; Asana and Trello are just two of the most popular options for entrepreneurs. They both help you to outline projects, assign them to individuals, and keep track of their progress, as well as assigning deadlines and adding assets to each project. Make sure that you’ve researched the best project management software out there.
HR management tools
If you’re starting to see a pattern emerging, it’s because software simply makes an entrepreneur’s life that much easier. Downloading apps to help you keep track of everyone on your books is a must if you’re serious about operating a business. This can help you to see when people have holiday booked, keep notes about various employees, and break down departments and other important information that’s easy to lose track of otherwise.
Communication software
Most businesses tend to favour Slack as their communication software of choice; it helps teams keep in touch with one another and facilitates communication across the company. You can also create different channels for different teams, as well as sending DMs to individual employees and users. However, there are other tools out there, so if Slack isn’t floating your boat for whatever reason, just make sure you’ve got some kind of communication tool for your organisation downloaded.
Recruitment platforms
Let’s take a break from downloading software for a moment and talk about something else that’s important for business owners: recruitment platforms. As a business owner, you’ll want to frequent LinkedIn to scout for potential employees, but there are lots of other potential benefits to using the platform as well. You can also use other recruitment platforms like AngelList (which does come with downloadable software) to try and spot new employees.
Video conferencing software
You and your team will probably need to talk face-to-face at times, and if you’re not all based in the same office, then video conferencing software will quickly become essential. Zoom still effectively rules the roost when it comes to great video conferencing software; it’s easy to use, it comes with a variety of fun features, and its time limits are generous. However, Microsoft Teams and Skype also offer solid team conferencing abilities.
Cloud storage
There are lots of fiercely competitive cloud storage options out there right now. Google Drive is probably the most well-known and widely-used of the bunch, but you can also use Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox, as well as a host of others. Cloud storage is important because it means that if your computer’s local storage (or that of any of your employees) becomes unavailable for some reason, you’ve still got your data backed up in the cloud and can access it whenever you want.
Password management
Now, let’s talk about something that’s important for each individual employee and for you as an entrepreneur. You’re probably going to be keeping track of a lot of passwords across your business endeavours, and that’s why a password manager is of paramount importance. Bitwarden is the best password manager out there right now; it’s open-source, which means it’s entirely free to use, and it syncs across devices, so you can access it on mobile as well as desktop.
Automation tools
Some aspects of your business can safely be left up to automation tools, which will make your overall workflow much more efficient. Apps like Automate.io and Zapier can help to automate processes that would otherwise be highly time-consuming and frustrating to perform by hand. You may have to pay a subscription fee, but if your business is in the black and performing relatively well financially, then it’s well worth the cost to keep productivity up.
Analytics
Whether you’re tracking your social media performance or seeing how well a certain product or service is performing, analytics are crucial for any business. Google Analytics marks itself out as the best tool for website analysis, and each social media platform has its own built-in analytical tools for seeing which posts are performing well, too. You can also get third-party analytics tools to help you keep track of various analytics across the board, so to speak, so make sure you’ve got the analytics tools you need!
No comments:
Post a Comment