ONE of the most widely discussed buzzwords today – “entrepreneurship” – is increasingly becoming a driving force of the world economy. It is believed that in the coming years entrepreneurship will encompass more areas of professions.
However, the greatest need for startups and small businesses in this crude competitive environment is to become highly efficient and productive. When it comes to getting a strategic advantage over others, efficiency and productivity are the keywords for small businesses.
So, this is the time for you to revisit your core strategies and implement the required measures to stay ahead in the game of entrepreneurship. Which is why, the importance of tools comes into the picture that will effectively help you to focus on the tasks most important to your business. Well, there are hundreds of business related tools available on the market and it is not that easy to select the best few. I, however, having a hands-on experience on certain tools, can say that these are among the most powerful ones if not the best.
Here is a brief description of these tools:
- PandaDoc
PandaDoc is a web-based software application tool that helps users create, share and deliver documents online. It performs an important function of content management system that delivers content and gets deals closed for your sales team. The remarkable features of PandaDoc include: inbuilt electronic signatures, workflow management, a document builder and CPQ (customer price quote) functionality. It supports different document forms such as PDFs and Docs.
PandaDoc allows you to customize your documents by configuring content blocks, modifying templates, and adding images, pricing tables as well as forms with ease and speed. You can utilize innovative presentation of proposals wherein templates looks stunning. This business makes your proposals appealing, thereby bringing professionalism in your work. While creating a document, you will also find an option of putting in some video. So, embedding videos will help you express your messages more clearly. PandaDoc also helps you to get instant approvals by getting immediate notifications whenever a sale has been approved.
- DropBox
DropBox is a powerful application that allows you to create, share and deliver documents along with keeping your team in sync. It makes it easy for others to share work with you as well. The most important feature of DropBox is it creates a virtual link between all of your internet connected devices. It provides the cloud saving facility to users with which they can save all of their images, documents, and video clips onto their DropBox account. This account can be accessed from anywhere and at any time. There are over 500 million DropdBox users around the world, which is indeed a crying testimony of its trusted online data backup service in the industry. One of the most impressive aspects of DropBox is its backup speed, which makes it an extremely viable tool for synchronization.
- Skype
Skype is an internet telephony service provider that works on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology. It allows people to make and receive online voice and video calls for free or for cheap. Skype uses its own technology for servers to route calls and data over the internet. It also uses its own codecs for the purpose of video conferencing, streaming media and for video editing applications.
Today, due to its immense popularity, Skype is widely used in an individual as well as professional spheres of life. This innovative technology is bringing friends, family, colleagues and businesses together. Particularly, the business communication received a huge boost by Skype as a business transaction is relatively easier even if two parties are communicating between two different continents. In addition to that, Skype is also contributing in establishing an effective employee engagement in order to achieve better productivity. This is the reason as to why Skype is transforming the communication landscape like never before.
- Evernote
A must for small businesses, Evernote is a potent tool that helps in hassle-free management of various tasks. It is a note-taking and archiving application that collects information, keeps it all neatly organized and even collaborates with others. Evernote is basically a cloud based software service whose purpose is to create, organize and store different types of media files. It keeps all of your data in a cloud through your personal Evernote account.
Although Evernote is somewhat similar to cloud storage services like Google Drive, Apple’s iCloud, but what it differs in is its ability to focus more on creating notebooks and notes rather than just uploading files. Which is why, many users have preferred it to other applications. If you make changes to an existing file in Evernote, it will sync up those changes across your entire accounts. That is, you never have to sync local copies between devices. The “Evernote Business” version is highly useful for small businesses because it manages a project and work data among colleagues without keeping track of multiple files, emails and programs.
- QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks is a complete accounting software tool that is used in day to day management of sales, keeping track of expenses, and carrying out business transactions such as customer invoicing and payment of bills. Its other features include: marketing tools, merchant services, product and supplies and training solutions. These different solutions cater to different industries as per their needs. In addition to these industry specific packages, QuickBooks has various add-ons as well as third party tools that are integrated to enhance current functions.
QuickBooks has been designed to be intuitive and easy to understand and its ability to seamlessly integrate with other programs is hugely benefiting small businesses. Another important feature of QuickBooks is customization with which it provides a number of ready-to-use templates. Business owners use these templates to create invoices, spreadsheets, charts and business plans. So, in a nutshell, QuickBooks is a customer resource management tool that helps small businesses to grow.
- Import.io
Import.io is an important tool that allows you to import data from different web pages and exporting that data to CSV format. It is basically a web scraping tool with which you can easily scrape thousands of web pages in minutes. The cutting-edge technology of Import.io is helping small businesses by fetching large volumes of data every day.
Commonly, Import.io is also known as data extraction or data mining application that uses highly sophisticated machine learning algorithms. With the help of this scraping tool, you can extract data you want automatically from list and detail pages. Apart from being a reliable web application, Import.io offers a free app for Windows, Mac OS, Android and Linux.
Final Words
Startups and small businesses definitely need unique ideas, concerted efforts, and innovative strategies to succeed. Moreover, with the help of technologies in the form of certain smart tools, they can create a winning recipe for themselves. The above mentioned tools are the ones that are capable of getting small businesses one step closer towards success.
birbahadur-singh
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