9 Business Tools You Need to Improve Your Processes

Now that you're physically running the business, you may find yourself overwhelmed by the day-to-day business process. There are only so many hours in the day, and you need to maximize every minute.

For that reason, we found nine amazing business tools to consider in order to improve your everyday business activities.

1. Upwork

Whether you're a startup or a well-established business, there will come a time when your team is lean in one area or another and isn’t able to complete a project or task.

You don’t want to do it yourself or in house, nor do you want to spend a fortune outsourcing it. That’s where having business tools like Upwork in your back pocket come in handy.

Upwork is a site that has various freelancers and independent contractors at your disposal who master in social media management, website development, copywriting, content writing, graphic design, and much more. You can pick and choose who you want to hire based on the needs of your project and your budget.

2. Slack

If you have employees, teams or freelancers you work with, Slack is a great business tool to use for communication. You can think of it as a beefed-up instant messaging tool. Now you can keep personal text messages in one place and all your business messages in another.

Within this platform, you are able to send messages, make phone calls, share files and much more. This is a great way to stay in touch and quickly communicate with others.

3. Trello

Trello is a task management app that allows you to create virtual boards to organize and prioritize projects. Within a board, you create what is known as a “card.” You are able to add notes, due dates and more to your board and cards.

You can give access to team members so that they can keep up to date with what is being worked on, what is in the pipeline, what needs to be completed and what has been finalized.

4. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a business tool that can help you with your accounting and bookkeeping. With QuickBooks, you can quickly and easily make and send invoices, check the status of an open invoice, pay bills, make payments and streamline the business process. You can run reports, check your business checking account and even send financial information directly to your accountant from QuickBooks.

5. Buffer

Buffer is a social media management platform. If you have social media business pages, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, you know how tiresome it can be to remember to post certain things at certain times to get the best engagement.

Buffer allows you to schedule all of your social posts so you can set it and forget it. The tool gives you the ability to automate all your social platforms so you don’t need to spend all day typing copy and submitting posts.

6. Canva

Have you ever looked at someone’s social media posts and thought they were some sort of graphics wizard? While they very well may be, so can you with the help of Canva.

Canva is a user-friendly graphic design business tool heavily used by brands across the nation. The platform allows you to make social media posts, book covers, social media header images, YouTube thumbnails, newsletters, infographics, presentations and much more.

7. MailChimp

Regardless of if you are a physical brick-and-mortar retailer or play in the ecommerce space, you need to be collecting emails. Emails are like gold and when you use them correctly, they can bring you tremendous growth.

MailChimp allows you to collect emails in their platform and create email campaigns to send out to your lists (they can be automated as well). Sending out promotional information, sales and new product or service launches can help drive traffic back to your website or platform where you can then convert sales.

8. Dropbox

Business is no longer conducted solely in offices. Employees and entrepreneurs work remotely and on various devices such as laptops, tablets and smartphones.

With Dropbox, you are able to save and sync files on a cloud-based server and pull from it on any device you wish, as long as you can connect to the internet.

Feel like working from a coffee shop today? No problem when you have all your files on Dropbox and can use them on whatever device you choose. Out on vacation but need to send files directly from your phone on the beach? Now you can.

9. Calendly

Have you ever been stuck playing phone tag with a client or even an employee? Or better yet, you send email after email asking someone when would be a good time to meet or hop on a call? It’s frustrating!

Thanks to business tools like Calendly, you can take a deep breath and allow Calendly to do all the heavy lifting for you through automation. This service gives you the ability to send someone a link of your schedule (or even have it in the signature of your emails) where they can go in, find a time that works for them and schedule it automatically in your calendar.

No more back and forth. No more wasted time. Calendly allows you the ability to stay productive and focus on your business.

Speaking of your calendar, do you know when you need to send in your annual report? No? Let Bizee help you through our  Annual Report Tool . It’s a quick and simple solution that can make your life a lot easier.