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5 Online Tools to Improve Small Business Productivity

Here are five online tools to help you manage your small business more effectively.

When it comes to managing a business, especially when working on the web, few things are more important than online applications that make our lives easier. From organizing projects to solving financial challenges, online apps can provide a technological lifeline for your small business.

Over the past few years, app growth has been tremendous thanks to the benefits that cloud based software brings to business such as improved mobility and lower costs. However, finding the right application for the task ahead can be daunting.

Here are five online tools to help you manage your business more effectively.

1. FleetSuite

FleetSuite is a suite of online collaboration tools that allows you to manage your team with ease. The tool is targeted to provide solutions for small businesses, therefore it doesn’t include the unnecessary features that sometimes bloat larger web apps.

The Suite includes modules for project estimation, invoicing, time management and scheduling. And since all of your information is accessible from anywhere in the world, it is ideal for small businesses with distributed teams and freelancers working remotely.

2. Google Drive

Thanks to its ubiquitous presence, Google Drive gives you access to your files no matter what computer or device you have at hand. Perfect for sharing files quickly and with Google Docs being one of the most useful free apps on the web. Google Drive offers a full suite of tools to store and handle your documentation from word processing and spreadsheets to presentations and diagramming.

3. MailChimp

With over 400,000 users, MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms on the web. It comes with a free gallery of HTML email templates as well as the ability to create your own template (i.e. for techies and advanced users). MailChimp is powerful yet extremely user-friendly, which is ideal for the non-technical business owner.

4. Insightly

Insightly is a popular customer relationship management (CRM) package that allows you to track leads, proposals, opportunities and projects as well as manage files through an easy to use interface.

The real strength of Insightly is its clever integrations, including the ability to automatically sync your account with your Google Contacts and Google calendar. The app also allows you to search your Google Drive and attach any Google Doc file to the relevant contact or organization. You can also integrate seamlessly with your MailChimp account.

5. Trello

Trello is a web-based project management application that allows you to organize your workloads into boards. Trello uses a paradigm for managing projects known as Kanban, which improves project organization.

This list of small business resources can help push your company into the cloud. I’ve used these apps for some time and have seen the benefits of each and hope that you will too.

Don’t forget to check out the top 10 financial apps.

Do you already use web apps as part of your business processes? What applications do you currently use to solve your business problems? Let us know in the comments section below.

Andrew Isidoro is a Digital Marketing Strategist at Box UK, a software development consultancy. You can find him on his marketing blog talking about all things digital and the state of semantic search.

 

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