If you’re anything like most small business owners, you wear all the “hats.” You are the sales and marketing team, head of HR, and over inventory. Well, whether you’re running a startup business or an enterprise, juggling too many responsibilities at once can take a major toll on your sanity… You start making careless mistakes that negatively impact your bottom line… That reason alone is reason enough to invest in professional business management applications to help you with your daily operations.
When you’re in the beginning stages of starting your business, you especially need to make sure you’re at least equipped with the basics of business management software to make running your business as easy as possible.
There are hundreds of thousands of different business management software and applications out there to help businesses run smoothly… You’ll find everything from electronic signature software to project management applications, but finding the right ones can be quite the challenge for business owners. To make matters even worse, the issue of finding the right one is no comparison to finding applications that are easy to use.
If you’re a business just starting out and you need a little help getting started, here are some of the basic business management applications to help you run your business smoothly without driving yourself insane trying to wear all the “hats.” And the best part about these applications is that they’re easy to use, no matter how tech-savvy you are or aren’t.
1. Best Email Service: Gmail
Email is one of the biggest methods of communication for businesses and it’s a major component of a robust business management system. Gmail is easy to use with tons of features, making it the go-to platform for personal and professional communication.
Maybe you’re in communication with a client but can’t talk on the phone… emails are the best form to communicate with clients because it allows you to send a complete thought instantly. It’s also a great form of communication for employees and customers as well.
Some of Gmail’s biggest features include automatically detecting junk and preventing it from reaching your inbox, spam filtering, and email categorization. It also has offline access, language support, and virus and malware scanning.
For personal use, Gmail is free, but for business, Gmail plans typically start for as little as $5 a month and offers users a free 14-day trial.
A business without email communication in place is a business poorly run.
2. Time Tracking: Chrometa
Chrometa is a great tool to track productivity. Starting and stopping the clock to see how long it takes you to complete a particular task can be extremely time consuming and unnecessary, and that’s why Chrometa is an essential program for business management… it’s a passive time tracker. Whether you’re working from a computer, laptop, or tablet, Chrometa is tracking everything you do.
3. Online Meetings: Skype
Skype has been around for quite some time, and ever since its emergence, it has been a major component for conducting business when clients aren’t able to meet in-person. Professionals are able to communicate by way of
- Video conferencing
- Instant messages
- Audio conferencing
- Sharing files
4. Team Communication: Slack
Slack is a team communication tool to help prevent information from slipping through the cracks and keeps everyone on the same page. Whether you’re sharing files, onboarding a new employee, or directly messaging your team, Slack makes communicating with an entire team effortless.
According to shrm.com, miscommunication between employees is one of the biggest contributors to businesses losing money, and it impacts small businesses even more. So effective communication between upper management and staff is crucial to the growth and expansion of any business, and Slack may be the tool your business can significantly benefit from.
The Best Solution to Meet the Needs of Your Small Business
There are lots of business management applications out there, but the key is to find and utilize the ones that will benefit your business the most. The applications listed above are crucial to the success of your business, especially if you’re just getting your business started.
One thing to also keep in mind is that although those applications are great and work wonders for many businesses, you also need to factor in that it can be quite tedious jumping from application to application to solve your uniques business challenges.
To serve and meet specific business needs, the best route would be to invest in JD Edwards services. These services will not only provide solutions to the challenges your business might be facing but it’s a solution where everything is all in one place, preventing you from having to jump from one application to the next.
From a business, technical, and functional standpoint, JD Edwards is your one-stop-shop solution for all your business needs.
