When operating your business, there are many tools that can be used to make everyday processes easier. There are some free small business tools that will help you get started and won’t break the bank. But with such a vast amount out on the market, it’s difficult to decide which will add real value to your business and which are likely to burn out in a few years. It’s important to take your time to look into the technologies you feel will be most useful to you and check reviews before implementing anything to your company. Some technologies are popular for a reason – they are stable, useful and have been tested time and time again so you know they’ll be reliable. Don’t write off totally new products either as just because they’re new doesn’t mean they aren’t any good. Often you can try a free trial before spending any money, so it’s worth shopping around and looking into this so you can try before you commit to anything. Here are four technologies to help improve your business operations…
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Document Signing and Tracking
One large time-wasting aspect of business that can be instantly streamlined with technology is the signing of documents. If you have contracts or other important documents that are required to be signed by another party, you have to print them, post them, wait for the other signature(s) and then wait for them to be posted back. This can take a number of days; the mail can get lost or damaged in the post and is a waste of time. Invest in document signing and tracking tools that can instantly send over digital copies of any document and be signed and sent back to you from the other party in a matter of minutes.
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Project Management and Development
There are a host of apps and sites out there which can help streamline your business processes. Try a job shop software to help streamline your operations, inventory, and sales, or tools such as Basecamp, Asana or Trello, which allows you to manage projects, assign tasks, share documents and see other people’s schedules. Here is a helpful guide on navigating the costs of BaseCamp or these other services. This will easily streamline your business and allow you to see what parts of different processes your business is at.
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Time Management Tools
There are many time management tools out there on the market which can help you to dedicate a certain amount of time to different tasks. These ensure that you and employees don’t spend too long on one thing and can keep track of how long specific things in their day to day schedule take place. Some tools work as an add-on to your web browser and you can label different projects and how long you want to spend on each one. When you are over the time limit it will send you a reminder.
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Employee Engagement
There are plenty of tech options out there for employees to work together and for employers to check what they are working on. Facebook has its own Facebook for the workplace and applications such as Skype and Slack are often used. These are much quicker means of communication than having to call people in other parts of a building or having to make your way to their desks every time. They are quick, efficient and a great way to help streamline your business.
There are many viable options to streamline your business processes. Make note of the above and do some research to find what will work best for you.
