Running a business is challenging, and without the right management, it can quickly become chaotic.
Whether you’re a startup or an SME, it’s easy to get bogged down in a slew of tasks, documents, and data when starting a new project. However, once the chaos sets in, it’s easy to lose track of your progress, which can lead to a loss of control, affecting your team’s productivity, missing deadlines, and client commitments.
If you’d rather avoid this, consider organising your business operations with tools that keep your tasks organised and running smoothly without throwing your operations into disarray.
In this article, we highlight the 5 tools that you might not have realised you needed for your company.
Table of Contents
1. CSR Platform
Corporate Social Responsibility is no longer a buzzword but an integral part of a business demonstrating its social responsibilities. Whether you’re a small or a large organisation engaged in initiatives that give back to society, you can make these tasks easier with a CSR platform.
A CSR platform features a host of tools and features designed to manage your CSR activities more efficiently. It allows your CSR managers to have a complete overview of the campaigns and initiatives undertaken. It’s a valuable digital tool to have when your organisation is keen to make a lasting social impact.
When one platform allows you to manage fundraising, donation matching, payroll giving, ESG tracking, and more, you don’t need to integrate different platforms for different activities.
For example, if you started a campaign to support the environment, use the CSR platform to record and track everything that your organisation and employees do to support the cause. From hours spent on volunteering to the CO2 offset, get a clear view to see how your campaigns are working. Most platforms also support reporting tools that can effortlessly create annual CSR reports for you.
2. ERP
Enterprise resource planning, or ERP, is software that brings together all your core business processes and combines them in a single system. This tool can be incredibly useful for SMEs and startups, and not only large businesses, contrary to popular belief. Integrating an ERP system allows your organisation to improve its overall business operations without signing up for individual tools for each operation or task.
Most ERP systems commonly manage different modules, including finance and accounting, purchasing and supply chain, inventory management, and CRM. The key advantage of having an ERP system is its customisation capabilities. Modern ERPs also allow you to customize their modules according to your business’ needs; this is the key advantage of integrating an ERP into your business.
For example, you can customize an ERP for your property management business by modifying the modules to fit your business’s requirements. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is an ERP that can be customized to help you make leasing, maintaining, and marketing your properties with ease. Likewise, this versatile software can also be integrated for manufacturing, restaurant operations, and service-based businesses.
3. Project Management Software
You may not know it, but project management software adds a lot of value to your organisation. When your business is small, projects are easier to handle, but as you grow, it can be hard to keep track. Over time, the pressure of trying to meet client deadlines while keeping track of everything may overwhelm your team.
If this sounds like you, it’s time for your startup or small business to use project management software. Like ERP systems, project management software can help you streamline your business processes without overburdening your teams. It can manage tasks, set up project timelines, monitor budgets, and also integrate with your existing external tools like cloud storage and email platforms. Not only that, but this tool can also serve businesses with varied needs.
For example, if you own and manage a garage, auto repair shop software works like a project management tool to manage jobs, handle invoicing, check technician performance, and oversee stock levels. This tool also works for businesses, like digital marketing, to assign, manage, and oversee tasks completed for clients.
4. Tools for Remote Teams
With the increasing adoption of remote and hybrid work, more organisations are looking for options that allow their employees to work remotely from anywhere. From virtual private networks to remote desktop services, there is a host of tools and services available to support your remote team.
Consider RDS or remote desktop services, allowing remote teams access to Windows desktops and applications from any location. This service makes Microsoft applications and desktops available from any device or client application through Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
Having this software for your remote employees allows secure and unhindered access and lets them continue working productively even when on the go. Moreover, this service is not device-dependent, which means you don’t need to set up or invest in on-premises laptops or desktops. This is why many remote or hybrid working companies using RDS implement a BYOD policy.
If this is something you would consider for your organisation, there are many reputable RDS providers in the UK, including BlackBox Hosting, that offer secure and reliable RDS services and are worth exploring.
5. Social Media Management Software
With almost every business having an active online social footprint, social media management software becomes imperative. Social media platforms are a place where your business and brand interact with your existing and potential customers, get talked about, and build a community. It takes more than just posting content to manage your brand’s social media accounts. You also need to schedule posts, look for engagement opportunities, manage ads, and analyse performance using analytics and reporting.
If your growing business has an active presence on social media, naturally, you want a solution that can handle all your social profiles in one place. This is where social media management software comes in. It can help you find the times when your audience is engaging with your brand the most, what content they like to interact with, and whether they’re leading to your business’ page.
Whether you’re managing a personal brand, a small local business or an enterprise, the right tool can help you manage multiple social profiles, stay ahead of trends, engage with audiences, and maintain a consistent brand voice.
To Sum Up
With these five tools, you can learn to keep pace with the changing needs of your evolving enterprise as well as of the market and the industry. Do your homework by identifying where your business needs more attention and deploy the right tool at the right phase of growth.
Which of these tools did you find most useful?
Apart from that, if you want to know more about Odoo as a Growth Tool: How the Right Setup Can Transform Your Business then visit our Business category.
