Four tools to use as your small business grows to help it thrive
As a small business grows, owners will likely be faced with newer challenges when it comes to keeping track of their operations, and maintaining quality of services.
Often, unorganized small and medium sized businesses become victims of their own success, getting thoroughly overwhelmed by sales, volumes, and the sheer scale of moving parts, resulting in the failure of an otherwise promising startup.
If your small business is at this inflexion point, it is absolutely essential to make certain interventions, especially pertaining to systems and processes, in order to effectively handle the growth.
While most small business owners may lack the necessary faculties to bring about such monumental changes, there are a number of tools that can help set the stage, and provide a robust framework for it to thrive.
1) Work, task and project management tools
Tools aimed at helping get things done, or keeping track of tasks, projects, and assignments are dime a dozen these days. If you feel you can no longer handle the day-to-day operations with a simple pen and paper, or by merely keeping track of things in your mind, choosing an effective SAAS tool such as Asana, ClickUp, or nTask could add substantial value to your business.
Such tools come in various shapes and sizes, catering to all types of businesses, teams, and activities. They usually provide an intuitive interface making it easy to get onboard, and start using them, and with the right approach, such tools can fundamentally overhaul your operations and productivity.
There are quite a few free solutions in this niche, but for extensive features, and integrations, a paid tool could be beneficial.
2) Customer relationship and resources management
As your client base starts to grow, you will require effective tools and systems to build and maintain customer relationships. The old pocket book, or rolodex may no longer cut it, but fortunately, there are plenty of more sophisticated tools that can help you track all customer interactions in one place.
Quality of service and customer retention rates start to drop once a certain threshold is crossed, and this is mostly owing to the lack of a proper CRM system in place.
Here again, there are plenty of free and paid solutions, with extensive features, plugins, integrations, and customizations, that can help craft your customer journey’s in a way that best suits your business.
3) Employee scheduling software
Another key source of complexity in a growing business is employees, and managing their varying schedules. If increasing business requires an expansion in your team size, you will now be forced to deal with different schedules of each employee, sick leaves, annual vacations, and more. All of which have to be dealt with and planned in a way such that it does not hamper critical operations.
There are a number of solutions to address this key issue, and most ERP solutions come with plugins and extensions to aid with the same.
In order to get your schedules in order, all you have to do is install a scheduling software, for which there are plenty of free or freemium options available, with integrations for various ERP and business management solutions.
4) Accounting and financial management
A simple cash-basis accounting system might work when you’re strictly a one-person operation, or have a turnover that is less than six figures, but as your business grows, it is essential to shift towards a more competent, and widely accepted accounting framework.
Everything from raising funds, to the yearly audit and compliance requirements, make it mandatory to follow the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which isn’t that overwhelming when using accounting suites such as Quickbooks, or Wave Accounting.
While it might seem daunting at first, you can refer to some guides on accounting, or go through the tutorials offered by the solutions themselves to get a better hang of it.
There are many tools that can help you grow
A small business growing past its humble origins is often a dream come true for most budding entrepreneurs, but this dream can quickly turn into a nightmare if you don’t know what you are doing.
Fortunately, you have more than a few tools, solutions, and guides to help you through the process, so that you can remain focused on helping your business thrive.
