We get it, entrepreneurs! Time is like gold to you. It’s hard to manage it efficiently when there’s a constant flow of incoming emails, phone dings, and alert beepings, on top of just having to simply work. It’s also hard to let loose the reigns of your business and trust a platform that will better your productivity, instead of sucking away the little time you already have. It is also important that as a business owner you have all the key skills that are needed to make your business a success. For this, you need to concentrate a lot on business development and management because, without the ability to manage your business, you won’t be able to continue its development, and this is the goal of many business owners. To develop your business to be self-sustaining. For example, if you owned a health and beauty salon or have assigned someone else to manage the salon, whilst you were busy conducting other business, then you would want them to complete something like a course in salon management, in order to gain the key skills that are needed for your business to succeed, with happy clients and employees and more business ideas to bring more clients to the salon. You then need to start thinking about the efficiency of your business. Another part of your business that you will need to think about is how to protect your employees, clients, and the business itself. For this, you need insurance with policies that will cover your business should anything untoward arises. You can learn more by reading about general liability insurance to see how it could help your business. However, when it comes to business management platforms, we’ve compiled a short and sweet list of platforms that we can first-hand say, is f@#$ing awesome. Here we go:
Start with the core of the business. You and your team members need to know what to do. Here are two of our favorite task management tools.
Trello
We like Trello because it’s a visually-focused way of organizing a project. You can assign different boards for different topics and build a list of things that need to be done within that topic. Trello allows you to assign responsibilities and set deadlines for when they need to be completed. The interface also allows users to click and drag boards in different orders to prioritize.
Asana
Asana’s approach to task management is a user-friendly list view of projects and tasks. Create tasks, assign them to one or more people, and set a deadline for the job. You can leave notes on each job, attach files and start a discussion. The fun thing about Asana is that it triggers this endorphin kick to get things checked off your list – when things are checked off, you might just see a flying rainbow unicorn – really. Lastly, they are on top of sending you reminders via email so you don’t forget.
Keeping an open line of communication between members of your business makes for a more streamlined, efficient team. One word, Slack.
Slack
We are in love with Slack. It’s a versatile team communication platform that allows you to do more than just that. Create different topics of discussion, (called channels) and invite people to join it. Slack supports a long list of different file types that you can send and allows users to privately message other teammates. Integrate other apps into Slack such as Twitter and Lyft even, and send a tweet or order a ride via commands.
Here are two of our top email management tools to help stay in touch with your leads and existing customers.
MailChimp
MailChimp simply said, is a great email management platform that allows you to easily design engagement templates, and is versatile for all business types, small or big. You can run reports and see how successful your emails are. MailChimp lets you send better emails to the right people by filtering through different targeting options.
Active Campaign
It’s a great tool for creating different email templates. Do you find yourself sending out the same email and drafting it a million times already? Create a beautiful template as you need it, save it, and send it out when you need it. Staying in contact with your leads is the lifeline of your business and Active Campaign makes it simple.
Social media management is often overlooked to maintain when there’s more pressing matters to tend to – especially when there are so many avenues to maintain and track. Here’s two platforms that make it simple.
Hootsuite and Spredfast
Both of these platforms lets you schedule social media posts so that you don’t waste your time having to log in and post across all your different channels. Hootsuite allows you to use their service for free with up to three different platforms before you need to upgrade. These both work in a similar fashion as you can see analytics and insights of your posts so you can better communicate with your audience.
How much time are you wasting creating schedules, collecting payment, and marketing your business? Our all-in-one business management platform saves countless hours in your work week. Even with small businesses, there is a third-party risk, this is why software such as Aravo can help businesses assess these risks and keep your business running.
Handlr
How nice would it be to wake up, sit back, and see your business run on its own? Handlr lets you do just that. Handlr is a mobile business management software specifically designed for small businesses to become bigger businesses. Upload your list of services, create open availability, and watch customers schedule themselves with you. Handlr lets business owners and their team members chat directly and share photos with customers. Team Members can check-in to services and you get paid instantly upon check out. That’s just the tip of the iceberg!
