The massive spread of COVID-19 has brought the whole world to a complete standstill. The strict lockdown enforced on people has affected the day to day functioning of many businesses, particularly SMBs. Even though the recent CARES Act passed by the Congress will provide financial assistance, owners of hard-hit businesses will still need to take up appropriate measures on their own to ensure the continuity of their establishments. In spite of this grim situation, businesses can still hold on their customers and generate sales by using the right tools. In this blog, we have listed out 12 essential tools for small businesses that will not only guarantee affordability but are highly efficient to help vulnerable businesses to survive of the financial crisis brought on by the outbreak.
1. Hexnode MDM
Hexnode MDM a mobile device management (MDM) software provides businesses with the convenience to easily set up and securely manage the mobile devices used by their employees. A robust MDM solution like Hexnode can protect all the valuable assets of the organization and provide its end-users with safe access to the resources of the company.
MDM further provides IT teams with the assistance to bulk enroll an entire fleet of devices and get them ready for the users at once. Through MDM, your IT team can easily push the relevant apps and configurations to the targeted devices.
In addition to providing easy enrolment, Hexnode MDM’s purpose-driven kiosk mode can help boost the efficiency of your workers by locking down the devices with the necessary apps needed to get the work done. By tapping into the remote access management feature, your IT admin can also monitor the devices in real-time and provide quick assistance to users facing troubleshooting issues.
Hexnode MDM with its abundance of features offers the perfect solution for small businesses to maintain a productive and safe working environment for their employees.
Features:
- Secure enrolment of apps, media and content to end users
- Content Distribution
- App Management
- Kiosk Lockdown Mode
- Remote Access Management
- Telecom Expense Management
- Built in Messaging
- Device Health Monitoring
- Device Configuration Management
- Geofencing
- Containerization
2. ClickUp
ClickUp is a task management tool designed to help employees work smarter by boosting their productivity. It offers a wide range of collaboration tools with real time editing and syncing. Users can even customize their own workflows depending on the needs of their project and setup different views for it. ClickUp is an essential tool for small businesses to accurately track their goal completion and time spend on each task.
Features:
- Have access to multiple collaboration tools
- Organize your workflow by creating sub tasks
- Effectively track your time for each task
- Create documents with ease
- Easy collaboration and team chat
- File sharing
- Customizable templates
- Track milestones
- Track expense and time
- Status tracking
- Set up task priorities
3. Microsoft Teams
Effective communication within the workplace is important. Businesses with effective communication and collaboration tools on board can achieve their goals faster and help boost the morale of their staff members on the long run.
Microsoft Teams is one of the best collaboration tools to conduct meetings and conferences online. Businesses can work with this tool to share screens and record meetings for future references. These meetings don’t always have to be a formal affair, you can personally connect with your team mates and make them more fun by applying filters and sharing gifs.
Features:
- Hold calls and collaborate your work from anywhere
- Easily host online meetings and web conferences with your team
- Assistance for scheduling meetings
- Take notes during meetings
- Share screens for easier collaboration
- Record meetings for future references
- Instant messaging
- Hold live events and presentations with thousands of attendees
- Make meetings more fun through personalized filters, gifs and stickers
4. Zapier
Have you ever spent hours on a task you would rather have automated? Luckily there are tools specially built to take that trouble out of your hands. Zapier is one such essential tool for small businesses managing busy teams. Simple tasks such as lead alerts and email triggers can be automated. Just link the web apps you need and the tool will automatically pass the information and share the data. Zapier has integration with multiple apps such as Google sheets, Microsoft Outlook, Facebook and Wordpress.
Features:
- Easily automates multiple tasks
- Integrations with over 2000 apps
5. Calendly
Appointment scheduling tools such as Calendly makes the whole process of scheduling appointments a complete breeze. With a simple setup, you can let the tool take care of your availability preferences and automate the scheduling process without having to undergo the tiresome work of exchanging countless mails.
As soon as the setup is complete, share the calendly links via email. After the recipient chooses a convenient time, the appointment will be added to your calendar.
Features:
- Has calendar integrations with Google, Outlook, iCloud and Office 365
- Users can have control over their appointments by setting buffer time between meetings
- Offers more flexibility such as one on one meetings and collective availability meetings
- Smooth time zone detection for invitees joining from another location
- Integration with essential apps such as Salesforce and Zapier
- Appointment Reminders
- Group Scheduling
- Online Booking
6. Deputy
The process of managing your workforce will not be much of a hassle if you have the right tools to implement it. Staff management tools like Deputy offers plenty of features where employers can easily set up schedules for their employees and check team availabilities.
By accurately recording the working hours in a time sheet, managers can promote a more healthier and productive work environment by making sure that their teams get enough breaks. These timesheets can be exported to the payroll with a simple click. One of the key features of Deputy is its seamless integration with important Point of Sales and payroll providers. This is an essential tool for small businesses to manage their staff efficiently.
Features:
7. Hootsuite
Influential social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter sets the perfect stage for businesses to interact with their customers directly.
Hootsuite, a social media management tool favored by both big enterprises and SMBs alike, makes the scheduling and management of your social media contents a lot easier. Businesses can generate reports and use them to track the performance of their marketing campaigns.
Features:
- Automatically schedule multiple posts across various social media accounts
- Post and store the pre-approved contents of your teams
- Create reports to measure the latest performance of your social media results
- Easily filter and monitor the posts via keyword, hashtag and location
- Integration with over 20 social networks
- Set up adequate security measures by customizing the employee permission levels
8. Accounting by Wave
One of the best accounting tools for SMBs, Wave allows users to access their data from any location with just a simple login. The software eradicates the need for time consuming data entries and generates financial reports on the go.
Users can get instant notifications whenever an invoice gets viewed and paid. This is an essential tool for small businesses to keep up with their finances as they can easily stay organized by setting up automatic payment reminders in their wave account whenever a payment is due. This accounting tool also comes with additional features such as receipt scanning.
Features:
- Generate and send invoices from any location
- Get instant notification whenever an invoice is viewed, gets paid or becomes due
- Set up automatic payment reminders in your wave account, in the event when a payment is due, the customer will instantly get a reminder via email
- Keep financial records up to date by marking the paid invoices
- Credit cards can be added for faster payments
9. Hubspot CRM
All the data you need to build better relationships with your customers can be kept in a centralized platform. Hubspot CRM, is a customer relationship management tool for businesses to keep track of all the vital information they need in a single database.
What makes this tool click for many small businesses is it’s ease of use and insightful features that helps them to build a community of happier and satisfied customers.
Features:
- Reporting dashboards
- Company insights
- Deal tracking
- Pipeline management
- Email tracking and notifications
- Prospect tracking for sales team
- Task management
- Document storage
- Marketing automation integration
- Easily schedule meetings
- Live chat
10. WordPress
WordPress is an ideal content management tool for small businesses to create a strong online presence. This free feature rich software harboring beautiful designs gives many businesses the freedom to create websites and blogs that will target the right audiences.
Users can customize their website further by adding multiple plugins such as galleries, mailing lists and an online store. With over 55,000 plugins present, WordPress sets the correct stage for business owners to create amazing contents and update them on regular intervals to meet the growing demands of their customers.
Features:
- Have access to a wide range of customizable designs
- Create SEO friendly contents to boost up the website’s rankings
- Easily manage media and contents
- Integration with over 55,000 plugins
- Document Indexing and Full Text Search
- Image and Text Editors
11. Canva
This graphic design tool houses plenty of professional templates for businesses to create prints, graphs and slides for presentations. It’s simple drag and drop functionality makes Canva an essential tool for small businesses to take care of their advertising needs by having access to a wide range of photo editing tools and an extensive media library.
Features:
- Access to customizable templates
- Create amazing designs with the help of hundreds of stock photos, illustrations and vectors
- Upload images of your own
- Choose from thousands of free icons and shapes
- Large selection of different font styles
- Collaboration tools
- Media library
12. Microsoft Outlook
Outlook is a rebranded version of Hotmail. This widely used email management tool not only guarantees a clutter free inbox, its integrated calendar helps users to stay organized by keeping track of the various events they create. You can even set up various tasks and see the ones that you have completed.
Easy access to Word, PowerPoint and Excel right from within the inbox makes it easy for team members to collaborate with each other and achieve their work goals on time. It enables privacy by data encrypting your mailbox after an email has been sent.
Features:
- Effective management of emails
- Easily schedule appointments, events and meetings
- Create a to-do list and set priorities to tasks that needs to be completed at once
- Ensures security by data encrypting the mailbox after an email is sent
- Easily collaborate with team members by accessing Word, PowerPoint and Excel from within the inbox
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