There is a big chance that at this moment you have more than one app opened on your smartphone. But this is not today’s’ topic, the main question is not if you should use apps and tools but which apps and tools you should use as a startup. And believe us, there are no shortages when it comes to available options. With thousands of productivity apps available on the market, the main question is how does someone choose the best solution?
Today, when everything is about convenience, having a long list of apps would feel more like an inconvenience than an advantage. Before you even think about investing your time and money to yet another new productivity application, you should for starters understand what your competitors are using and what apps would be relevant to the startup of your size and the industry you are in.
Another important question would be how does the chosen app integrates with other tools and apps you are already using? Ignoring these questions could result in company employees losing a lot of time managing soiled apps and tools. Since startups are always running short on time, resources and money, finding and integrating the right apps is crucial. The right integration should end up giving back some time to the employees so they could use that extra time to focus on what is really important and that is growing the startup.
In the following text, you will find a list of most commonly used productivity apps by some of the most successful startups and small businesses. Follow along.
When you run a startup everything around you happens extremely fast. In that fast-moving environment, it is pretty easy to get caught up with all the work and forget important things and make mistakes. In case the contract you are just about to sign has some crucial mistakes in it, you could easily correct them all with the help of your smartphone. Simply use Image to Word Converter app to scan and convert the document to MS Word, edit it and then print the freshly edited document. It is as easy as that. Besides scanning, you can also convert images to text directly from your smartphone gallery, Gmail attachments or supported cloud services like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive etc.
Zoho CRM
If you are in a sales business this app is a must. It is extremely hard to track all of your sales leads and not to mention your sales stuff. Luckily for you, there are plenty of customer relationship management (CRM) tools that will help you manage all of the service and sales data your business generates. Unfortunately, these services can be quite expensive and difficult to use. Zoho CRM claims that it solved that problem. The free app isn’t complex and complicated to use, but it still offers you some great features. It offers your startup access for up to 10 users, marketing, customer support automation, basic sales lead, limited reporting, and forecasting tools. There is really not much more to ask.
HelloSign
This app will help you manage contact and close deals from one centralized place. It allows you to request signatures, track contract statuses and autofill contract information. There is an option to sort documents by signature status or last view which will help you determine time when to follow up with leads. By using the app it is possible to sign, sync and deliver contracts with less than an hour turnaround time. The app is compliant with all major eSignature laws like UETA, ESIGN, and European eIDAS which means that all signatures are legally binding.
Slack
Good team communication is crucial, especially in the early stages of a startup. Slack is one of the best apps that will help you manage it like a pro. You can chat with your employees in large open groups or you can create specific smaller groups and even one-to-one channels for private conversations. Beside messages you can share various types of documents to other parties in chat groups. Slack’s free option comes with 5GB of file storage which should be more than enough for the beginning.
We already talked about how automation of various processes of a startup is important, and one part of the business where you will definitely need it is email marketing. Whatever you are trying to sell, you will need a powerful email marketing tool and there is no better tool than Mailchimp. It has as they call it “Forever Free” plan which lets you send 12,000 emails over a period of one month to less than 2,000 accounts. If you think that free plan is too small for your company, you can always choose a monthly or pay-as-you-go plan which basically means that you pay for each email you send. The app allows you to create beautiful emails that match the look and feel of your brand and you can manage lists, send campaigns, add new subscribers and view reports.
What’s your favorite app? The market is full of various unknown but still very innovate and useful apps so you shouldn’t wait any further, dig in and find your next favorite productivity app. You should definitely start with adding these 5 apps to your arsenal – it even might be the difference from moving from the startup to a scaleup.
