4 Digital Tools to Familiarize Yourself With as a New Business Owner

It’s fair to say that the skills you need to run a business are much more complex than they used to be. Sure, talents like inventory management, being able to communicate and giving a business partner or client a strong handshake are all still necessary and have been for centuries, but the truth is that in our modern, hyper-connected world, there are many additional tools to use.

Many of these tools, of course, have been designed for user familiarity and ease of use. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to go. If you feel as though you’re continually spinning digital plates, or that your constant maintenance if your inbox is getting out of hand, it might be worth considering some of the best digital tools to make your life easier.

With that in mind, please consider some of the following advice:

Office Productivity Suites

These suites can be as varied as the uses you might have for them. For example, the Adobe Creative Suite is known to be a full-form package for most industry-standard creatives, providing graphic design, motion graphics, web and print design, video and photo editing capabilities, and more. However, certain bespoke tools can be more precise for your own purposes, such as continual doc to PDF conversion through utilities you build yourself.

It’s also important to consider some of the baseline apps you’ll use to remain consistent throughout your enterprise. If half the company is using Google Workspace and half is using Microsoft 365, there’s an issue and it needs to be addressed quickly. You might decide to use Notion as an enterprise, or you might decide that Evernote is better. Either way, make sure these standards are adopted company-wide and that you have stringent tutorials for each staff member to follow regarding their use.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software

Ultimately, you need a baseline platform to better communicate with your customers and clients. That might include individual clients or it might include B2B connections and more. Having a centralized space to manage bookings, requirements, assignments from staff, updates, customer service responses and more can help you avoid splitting all of that information in a thousand different directions.

This allows management and your forward-focused staff to be careful and attentive to the needs being managed. Customers won’t know the exact platform you’re using of course, but they will notice faster response times, more uniform and reliable communications, and better management of their time with your firm.

But it’s not just managing your customers and keeping them on good terms with you that counts. A good CRM can help you plan out your entire retention and acquisition strategy. For example, CRM software often incorporates automation features, such as email marketing, which allows you to engage with your customers at scale or complete your sales pipeline. 

You can schedule follow-ups, send tailored messages, and analyze your customer’s data to refine your marketing strategies from there. Having this data to hand and automatically tracked can save you so much time in the long run, even if a good CRM has so many features that adopting one can take a little adjustment to get used to.

Project Management Platforms

We all know how much of a nightmare a badly managed project can be, even in our personal lives when moving house or trying to get to grips with an expensive wedding. Thankfully, in the business world, there are many worthwhile tools to use to keep you above board, your projects properly managed, your staff assigned, and tasks prioritized.

Platforms like Trello, Asana, and Monday.com offer versatile features that empower you to plan, track, and manage all manner of business necessities. They’re also easy to use and collaborate with other staff members on, meaning you can quite literally remain on the same page no matter who you’re working with – even remote staff.

Project management tools usually provide a visual representation of tasks, which helps you prioritize and allocate resources effectively, even in multi-layered projects with an immense number of moving parts and deadlines. You can create task lists, assign responsibilities, set deadlines, and monitor progress in real-time – saving you all the hassle of miscommunication that can sometimes even lead to project failure. This not only keeps your projects on track but, quite frankly. It keeps you sane.

Payroll Software

Ultimately, keeping staff paid on time is one of the most essential practices a business could ever follow – it’s non-negotiable from the jump. Payroll software is an essential place to start because it helps you track hours, especially for those on hourly wages. 

This way, you can also automatically deduct tax contributions where appropriate. A wage slip that breaks all of this down and can be used to plan finances will be appreciated by staff. Moreover, some payroll software allows accounts to be created by staff to see how many holiday days they have left, and when they can book them before they reset. 

Most companies choose to outsource their payroll to begin with, but if your company has few employees or is hoping to expand, you may wish to invest in payroll software and bring it in-house. Of course, only do this when you’re 100% ready for the approach because robust payment schedules are absolutely essential to ensure perfection. It’s as serious as aiming for that 0% injury rate forever because when people experience payment issues, whether that be in relation to staff or external clients, it can cause a cascade of financial issues for both them and you.

While these are hardly the only digital tools a business owner should familiarize themselves with, they are far and above some of the most important to consider when structuring your business. As your experience develops and your use-cases grow, you may consider more industry-specific suites that work best for your needs.

It’s also important to not just take recommendations for granted, as what works for another business, perhaps a similar one in your sector, may not work for you. For that reason, it’s good to try a couple before you integrate them into your system, and scale as you grow.

With this advice, we hope you can get the great ball of digital skillsets and utilities rolling.