Ask yourself as a business owner how much time you spend working ‘in’ your business instead of working ‘on’ your business. A survey by The Alternative Board shows that on average, an entrepreneur spends 68.1% of their time working ‘in’ the business – managing daily tasks like marketing, bookkeeping, etc. – and they have only 31.9% of the time to spend ‘on’ their business – strategic planning, long-term targets, goals, etc.
If you find yourself trapped in the same cycle, you need to break out of it for the sake of your business’s growth. As a business owner, if you spend most of your time managing sales and campaigns, who will determine your business’s goals and long-term plans? Here is where technology steps in.
Almost every business task is now automated with the help of software tools.
- Enterprise Process Management Software:
With the help of an enterprise process management tool like ERP software, you will be able to manage several business activities all in one place. It is an integrated platform; thus, it enables you to streamline the data flow between numerous business activities. Hence, it creates a comprehensive, single system that automates, simplifies, and streamlines processes and sub-processes. This leads to optimal use of resources.
There are many options of ERP software available in the market. But not every ERP software is practical for every business, as every business has different needs. You require an ERP with relevant functionalities that will work for your business. Therefore, you should utilize the services of a consulting company like NetSuite Services to get your own customized ERP software to enhance efficiency, productivity, higher returns, and gain a competitive advantage.
- Project Management Software:
Creating, organizing, tracking, streamlining, controlling, and managing projects and tasks is essential for every business, such as construction and cleaning. Not only are all these steps important, but they are also overwhelming to handle. So it is best to opt rovuk.com project management software for your business.
The reason is that such software will combine every step in one place. If you have separate systems for managing tasks, it will be difficult to link the relevant task or projects with the customers. Similarly, with separate systems, you will not be able to automatically associate the task or project with its costs. Thus, adopting a single system enables you to track the projects in each step and link them with customers and costs simultaneously to send appropriate invoices. According to reports, PMS is used in 77% of high-performing projects.
- Customer Relation Management Software:
This goes without saying that your business’s success or failure depends on your relationship with your customers. The more you satisfy your customers with accurate, quick services, the more chances of retaining them. For this purpose, CRM or customer relationship management software will help you out.
Adopting software for better customer relationship management will enhance your customer’s experience with your business and improve your sales. With the help of such software, you can create customer prospects and databases. And you will become able to easily update them instantly in case you gain additional information about any of the prior saved contacts. You will also be able to track the number of times you communicate with your contacts or customers with such software. Combine it with an invoice parser and you just built a great customer relation system.
- Content Management System:
Every business has an online website nowadays, and it is necessary to keep updating the content on your website for better SEO ranking. However, it can become difficult to manage the task of constantly upgrading the content. Here the content management system will help you out.
The best feature of the content management system is that no knowledge or skills in coding are mandatory for its use. Your marketing and content development teams can use it with complete ease and efficiency. However, when going for an off-the-shelf content management system, keep in mind that it might be prone to cyber-attacks if it is an open-source system.
To overcome this problem, you can go for a custom-made system. This way, your platform will be according to your company’s requirements and properly coded with a non-viewable source code.
- Marketing Automation Software:
A business expands its customer base by turning leads into customers. This requires proper and efficient marketing. The more you send a contact, or a customer, relevant offers about products or services of their interest, the more likely they will buy from you.
However, all this marketing can become extremely mundane and tiring when done manually. So, if you adopt marketing automation software, it will automate all the marketing tasks. All the marketing activities like posting on social media, sending emails, etc., will get done automatically without human intervention. Statistics show that 75% of marketers are currently using at least one type of marketing automation tool.
The marketing software tracks data from the customers’ database and sends relevant marketing offers through all shopping mediums. The marketing automation software will do it efficiently within a few minutes. This will save the valuable time, as well as energy, of your employees.
- Human Resource Management Software:
We all know that there are several tasks the human resource department handles and how important they are for your business. With human resource management software, you can not only lessen the burden on your HR team but also eliminate the chances of human errors.
The HRMS is a technological advancement with which you can easily automate HR-related duties like absence and leave management, talent management, performance management, payroll management, etc. With this software installed, your HR team will have more time and energy to focus on other critical tasks, like resolving employee conflicts, which cannot be automated.
Not only will it do the basic tasks for you, but with advanced features, it can also increase your employees’ productivity. An HRMS can provide tailor-made reports, personalized rewards, custom performance appraisal reports, forms, etc. This way, measuring the productivity and performance of your employees will not only become automatic and efficient, but with appraisal forms and custom rewards, your employees will also stay highly motivated.
Concluding remarks:
When you start a business, a good idea takes it off the ground. But as the supporting a business for massive grows, it becomes more and more difficult to tackle each task manually, and you can no longer keep depending on your skills and ideas alone. That is why it is best to utilize software solutions for your growing business. These six helpful software tools will increase the overall efficiency of your business and help it grow by automating different tasks.