4 Must-Have Tools for Entrepreneurs
Overview
This article deals with available tools that offer solutions and could help you become more efficient and productive.
Solutions to Help You Become More Efficient and Productive
Being an entrepreneur is no easy task. You need to stay on top of everything to ensure the success of your business. From day one of operation, there could be a lot of responsibilities on your plate.
Almost all tasks such as hiring employees, marketing the business, dealing with finances, employee scheduling, as well as managing teams, may fall under the wide spectrum of entrepreneur’s responsibilities. Keeping up with the financial side of owning a small business can feel like a never-ending job. From invoices to expenses to day-to-day accouting and dealing with the IRS, it's a wonder that entrepreneurs ever find the time to deal with actually producing goods or providng services. Fortunately, there are numerous financing techniques such as factoring, crowdfunding, getting a personal loan for business, etc.
Having so many tasks can be daunting and stressful especially if you are new to your chosen business.
This article deals with available tools that offer solutions and could help you become more efficient and productive.
Employee Time Tracking Tool
An employee time tracking tool could be useful to a specific business. These tools can be customized to fit the demands and requirements of your business. A time tracking software falls under the category of computer software that allows business managers or entrepreneurs to monitor the time spent of every employee on a given project.
The use of time tracking tools ensures accurate recording of hours spent on a given project which is useful to both employers and employees. One of the main benefits of the tool is that it promotes transparency on the working hours rendered by an employee which eradicates any possible payment dispute between the parties involved.
In most cases, the tool can be downloaded by the employee on their smartphones which allows them to personally track the time spent on a given project. These tools are widely used in many industries and are not only limited to large companies with complicated work schedules. Small entrepreneurs, startups, and freelancers who bill their clients on an hourly or daily basis can also utilize time tracker tools.
Messaging Platforms
Communication is an essential key to the success of any business. In this digital age, entrepreneurs may use various messaging platforms that are available on the internet. Some of them can be downloaded for free while some require a subscription.
For instance, Slack is a useful chat app in the market that is increasingly becoming more popular these days. With it, you can create several channels that cater to different topics and if you don't want it to be public, you may opt for a private conversation. This tool also allows you to share files and to easily locate messages.
Apart from Slack, there are a lot of messaging platform apps that are available on the internet such as Viber, Whatsapp, Teams, Skype, etc. Bottom line is that entrepreneurs should take advantage of these messaging platforms, especially those that can be downloaded free of charge. Remember, communication is always an indispensable element of every business.
List Making Tool
For list-making and project management, there are many available apps on the internet such as Trello, Basecamp, and Podio. Such tools allow you to create to-do lists, organize your work, monitor and assign tasks to your team—the easiest and most collaborative way.
These tools are very useful for entrepreneurs as it's an organized way of checking what's currently being worked on, who is in charge of the work and if something is pending or due soon. Also, with these tools, you can easily determine which part of the work is finished and which part of the work is still pending. In short, it allows you to have an overview of the entire project.
Just think of a whiteboard—full of lists and sticky notes—with each note representing a task for you and your team. Each of those sticky notes contains photos, attachments, etc. List-making tools and project management apps are like your business' whiteboards. But it's digital and mobile—allowing you to take it anywhere you go. You can access it on your smartphone or from any computer via the web.
Issue Tracking Tools
In every business, it is common to have issues and problems encountered on your day to day operations. While it is important that these issues be resolved immediately to avoid disruption of business operations; it is equally important that these issues must be tracked for future reference and to avoid recurrence of the same problem.
This is the importance of issue tracking tools. In most cases, entrepreneurs are content with the resolution of an issue without taking into consideration the possibility that the same could crop up later. So you should not just resolve the issue. The best approach is to resolve it and ensure that it will not occur again in the future.
Issue tracking tool such as JIRA caters to this requirement. It is highly recommended for entrepreneurs to use issue-tracking tools to ensure the smooth operation of the business.
Final Thoughts
Entrepreneurs should take advantage of the tools that are available online. In this digital age, you are on top of your game if you know how to utilize technology for your benefit.
Remember that not all online tools and software require a subscription. Many are available free of charge—so what are you waiting for?