Digital tools are driving modern business startups.
With the need to collaborate internally, communicate with customers, and protect business assets, among other business needs, there’s a tool designed to meet every business need.
According to a study conducted by Deloitte, businesses that fail to embrace technology are left behind in the highly competitive industry.
Based on the study findings, “tech-savvy small businesses” generate more revenue per employee and are more likely to create jobs than their non-digital counterparts.
Even so, every four in five small businesses in the U.S are yet to take advantage of digital tools fully. With the right business tech tools, your startup gains a competitive advantage over similar businesses in the industry.
Harness the power of technology and the internet to operate, market, and manage your business. Technology streamlines various business operations, allowing you to pay more attention in terms of energy and time on the growth of your business.
Here’re five tools your startup needs to grow and succeed, atop accessing more opportunities available on the market:
1. Collaboration and communication tools
Employee communication is important for the success of your projects. However, tracking conversations amongst your employees isn’t as easy as your business grows.
Use a communication and collaboration tool such as Slack to enable your team members to share files, chat, and integrate other relevant project apps.
2. Project management tools
If your business teams need to collaborate or you have a remote team, there’s a need to track various aspects of your business goals and projects.
The isolated nature of emails makes it unsuitable for tracking your projects. This means that your team members can easily be left out of an important update if you accidentally leave them out of any specific message.
Wrike and Trello are efficient project management tools for all kinds of businesses. Based on the cloud, the tools provide a complete and transparent view of the progress of your projects during a lifecycle.
With the project management tools, everyone in your team has access to project progress from start to finish.
3. Workplace kitchens
If your office doesn’t already have a kitchen, you need to add one to your commercial space.
As part of your office, the kitchen gives your employees the space they need to refresh and refuel during work breaks. It’s also an excellent platform for your workers to develop strong bonds and working relationships, and share ideas.
According to a study, more than half of employees (57%) would be more productive in a company with a kitchen.
Some things to include in your office kitchen include:
- Comfortable seating
- Healthy snack stations
- Technology such as charging stations for laptops
- Food and clean water – invest in recent water softening technology to ensure your employees have access to soft water for drinking. Before buying a water softener solution, make sure you read and understand how it works to get the most suitable product for your workplace kitchen.
4. Tools for keyword research
Content marketing is an important aspect of your promotional campaigns online. How can your business create thoughtful and interesting content that Google will love and rank high on search engine results?
You need a keyword research tool such as Ahrefs to help you assess and find industry-specific search terms and words that can rank your content higher on Google search.
With your chosen keywords, you can create high quality, authoritative content pieces around the terms to post on your website, blog, or social media website. This increases traffic to your business.
Your competitors can gain a competitive advantage over your business if you fail to deploy a range of digital tools aimed at automating and simplifying tasks, enhancing operations, and connecting remote workers to collaborate.
First, assess available digital tools on the market to begin your business on the right foot. The tools make it easier to scale up your business, integrating them into your existing, inefficient business processes.
5. Social media management tools
Your startup also needs a website and social media channels to give it an online presence. Create your social media accounts to begin posting engaging content with your target audience and other users on the platform.
Creating and posting content, engaging your business followers, responding to questions and feedback from customers, among other signs indicate that you’re dedicated to the social media platforms.
A social media management tool such as Hootsuite can help you monitor feeds, engage, and interact with users, schedule posts, and view your business interactions.
Other tools you may need to grow your business include:
- Accounting software such as Xero
- Email marketing tool such as Constant Contact
- Customer relationship management tool such as Hubspot
- Video conferencing tools such as Join.me
- File access and storage using Dropbox