3 Essential Categories Of Software That Every Small Business Needs

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June 6, 2022 Business

Running a business can be difficult if your team is not equipped with the right tools. Managers need to ensure that their employees and teams have access to essential tools and software to ease their everyday work processes and reduce the level of manual input required from employees on an everyday basis.

While big corporations have access to customized software and purpose-built solutions, small businesses often resort to using free solutions and often use the same tools for multiple purposes such as using spreadsheets to handle everything from accounting to payroll.

While the above may seem like a plausible solution in the short term, it simply isn’t feasible to continue with in the long run. Hence, given below are three essential categories of software that every small business needs and must integrate to run work processes efficiently:

Accounting Software

Accounting is an integral part of every business and its pertaining processes. Before choosing accounting software for your business, you need to list down all your accounting needs and assess all software based on those needs. Most businesses need to use accounting software to create financial statements, track expenses, monitor cash flow, and bookkeeping.

The most popular accounting software for small businesses for these needs includes Xero and QuickBooks, which are both easy to use and have a great interface. Businesses may also need to run payroll, create pay slips, and calculate bonuses. This would require add-on features and software to your existing accounting software. Such add-ons also support functions such as tax calculation and tax filing.

Project Management Software

Project management software is crucial for the success of your business projects and collaboration efforts. Companies run multiple projects and processes daily that require input and approval from different team members. These projects may also be divided into tasks that may or may not be sequential. A good project management software that suits most businesses’ project management needs is Trello.

Trello is an important component of Atlassian tools that allow managers to create public and private boards depending on the nature of their project. These boards are then characterized by different phases of the said project and each phase can be broken up into tasks. These tasks can be assigned to respective team members, can feature comments, and be dragged to be dropped to other phases as needed. Users can complete their work by uploading documents, adding links, and marking their work as completed. Managers can track the project’s progress by supervising the board.

If you’re exploring alternatives to Trello, you may find valuable insights in Meistertask’s article about Trello alternatives, offering a comprehensive comparison and user reviews to help you make an informed decision for your project management needs.

CRM Software

Customer Relationship Management or CRM software is yet another crucial category of software that companies need to incorporate into their business. CRM software helps companies deal with their customers and drive business growth while optimizing business communication and pertaining processes.

Pipedrive, another powerful CRM tool, functions as a repository where managers can combine the functions of sales, marketing, and customer relations. CRM software, along with CRM integration with Pipedrive, helps companies deal with their customers and drive business growth while optimizing business communication and pertaining processes. By leveraging these solutions, businesses can synchronize their sales, marketing, and customer relations efforts, enabling seamless collaboration between different departments.

Zoho is a great CRM solution that helps companies gain insight into their relationship with their customers, increase customer retention, and drive sales. It essentially functions as a repository where managers can combine the functions of sales, marketing, and customer relations. By using Zoho, managers can automate routine sales, capture leads, score leads, close deals, manage contracts, and view customer data in real-time. They can also create flowcharts for sales and use customer data to analyze which part in the sales process they incur the most issues.

Conclusion

The above-mentioned software is crucial to the smooth functioning of every business. Small businesses must be prepared to scale their operations for the future and ensure that when met with periods of high growth, their internal systems are prepared and well-equipped to make the change. Hence, the mentioned software categories of accounting, project management, and CRM should be used by every business.