Small business owners often wear multiple hats, juggling various tasks to keep their operations running smoothly. Luckily for us, there is now a wealth of tools available to help streamline processes, improve efficiency and boost productivity.
In this article, I’ll explore some of the most useful digital tools I’ve found for small business owners.
Accounting and Financial Management
Managing finances is a critical aspect of running a small business – and not one that I particularly enjoy. Fortunately, there are several digital tools that can simplify this task:
QuickBooks is a comprehensive accounting software that allows small business owners to track income and expenses, create invoices and generate financial reports. It’s user-friendly and helps businesses stay organised.
Xero is another excellent accounting tool that offers features like bank reconciliation, expense tracking and payroll management. It’s cloud-based, making it accessible from anywhere.
Both are specifically designed for small to medium sized businesses, and make it easy for you to do your own accounts rather than paying a bookkeeper.
Project Management
Effective project management is essential if you find yourself constantly working across various tasks and projects. Great digital tools can help you stay on track and keep an eye on deadlines and deliverables.
Trello is a user-friendly project management tool that uses boards, lists, and cards to help teams organise and prioritise tasks. It’s perfect for small businesses with simple project management needs.
For more complex needs, Asana offers more advanced project management features, including task dependencies, timelines and goal tracking. It’s suitable for businesses that need a more robust solution.
Communication and Collaboration
If you have a small team, contractors or multiple clients, you may want to consider the tools you use for communication. Keeping all your comms in one place helps you keep track and gives you a central platform to refer back to, which is why a lot of business owners like Slack. It’s a real-time messaging platform that facilitates communication across channels for different topics or teams, making it easy to stay organised.
For remote meetings and video conferences, Zoom is a popular choice. It offers features like screen sharing and recording, making it ideal for small businesses with remote team members or clients.
Social media management
In today’s digital marketing landscape, having a strong social media presence is essential, and there are plenty of tools out there to help you manage your social media efforts effectively.
Hootsuite is one of the biggest and best-known social media mangers out there. It allows users to schedule posts, track social media engagement, and manage multiple social media accounts in one place. It’s a time-saving tool for small businesses looking to maintain a consistent online presence.
But there are plenty of other options out there, all offering slightly different benefits. Look at Buffer, MeetEdgar, SocialPilot, Loomly or Sked, or find one of the many others out there.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Building and maintaining strong customer relationships is vital for small businesses. CRM tools can help you keep track of your interactions and customer data:
HubSpot CRM offers a free version with features like contact management, email tracking, and lead scoring. It’s an excellent choice for small businesses looking to grow their customer base.
You can also consider Zoho, a great option for startups and small businesses because of its sales workflows and pay-as-you-go pricing, or Freshsales, which has a low learning curve without too many bells and whistles.
Email marketing
Email marketing remains a powerful tool for reaching and engaging with your audience, but you’ll almost certainly want a digital tool to help you create and send effective email campaigns.
Mailchimp is a user-friendly platform that offers email marketing, audience segmentation and automation. It’s a great option for small businesses looking to start or expand their email marketing efforts.
Constant Contact provides email marketing, event management and online survey tools, making it a good choice for small businesses that want to leverage multiple channels.
E-commerce and online sales
If your business is based on selling products or services online, having an e-commerce platform is essential. Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that offers a wide range of features, including website design, inventory management and payment processing. It’s user-friendly and suitable for businesses of all sizes.
Or, if you’re using WordPress for your website, WooCommerce is a plugin that can turn your site into an e-commerce powerhouse. It’s highly customisable and integrates seamlessly with WordPress.
Website and Content Management
A professional online presence is essential for all businesses, and luckily there are plenty of tools that will let you create a starter website yourself, without any coding knowledge.
WordPress is a widely-used content management system (CMS) that offers flexibility and ease of use. It integrates with countless AI website developers, so you can easily throw together a functional and attractive website.
Squarespace is a user-friendly website builder that offers stunning templates and a drag-and-drop editor. It’s ideal for small businesses looking to inexpensively create a visually appealing website.
Both these options are scalable and can be further developed as your needs grow.
Cybersecurity
Protecting your business and customer data is essential, so you’ll want to look at cybersecurity tools to help safeguard your digital assets.
Norton 360 is a comprehensive cybersecurity suite that offers antivirus protection, a VPN and identity theft protection. It’s a robust solution for small businesses concerned about online security.
LastPass is a password management tool that helps you create and store strong, unique passwords for all your online accounts. It enhances security and simplifies password management.
Internet Connection
To facilitate all these great tools that are available to small businesses, you’ll need fast and reliable internet. I’ve found Enterprise Ethernet is the best choice for internet connectivity.
It uses the same fibre-optic cable technology as FTTP but Enterprise Ethernet is delivered over a dedicated network with a direct path, which gives me even faster, more secure and lower latency connectivity. Plus, FTTP and Enterprise Ethernet deliver internet through separate connections, which means guaranteed business continuity.
As small business owners today, we have access to an amazing wide range of digital tools to streamline operations, improve efficiency and boost productivity. My advice? Make sure you’re leveraging these digital tools to help you thrive in an increasingly competitive business landscape.
Marshall Thurlow is the Director and Founder of Orion Marketing Pty Ltd.
He is a digital marketer with expertise in SEO, website design, content marketing and project management. With over 15 years of experience spanning government, not-for-profit and the private sector, he is well equipped to lead teams to success. He is a big proponent of environmental sustainability, critical thinking and progressive issues.
