These days, establishing an enterprise is probably the most formidable challenge a businessman can face, considering the pandemic and the high prices of materials and other operational costs. If you add the fact that there are already plenty of competitors vying for a solid spot in the market, difficulties will undoubtedly skyrocket. Owing to the COVID-19 virus, the United States alone had 60 percent of businesses closed down — roughly more than 160,000 ventures. Ironically, the pandemic also inspired aspiring entrepreneurs to open businesses even in unfavorable circumstances. If you belong to the latter, prepare yourself using tools and equipment that will help you optimally run a business in a time of lockdowns and quarantines.
Accounting Applications
To produce quality products, you first have to manage your internal processes seamlessly. If you’re a relatively new venture with a team of only a few members, you’re most likely the one handling essential business aspects, such as its finances. As a novice entrepreneur, it’s challenging to keep your financial books balanced and be on top of your bills. As a solution, you can download accounting apps to help handle your expenses and invoices.
Payroll
When starting, you don’t want to lose your team over disputes regarding their salary. If you don’t know how to begin managing your employees’ payroll, it’s best to get a little assistance from reliable applications. Payroll apps allow you to process salaries, purchase benefits for your employees, fast-track deposits, and get payroll reports and updates using your mobile device. These apps are beneficial especially for starting businesses since they act as a finance team and offer you transparent data on a specific part of your finances.
Task Management Software
According to statistics, employees are only productive 60 percent of the time in the office. You can conclude that the omitted 40 percent out of 100 is still well spent if you consider breaks and other factors. But what if you, as an employer, can bolster your team’s productivity using that 60-percent margin or even allow it to go higher? Motivation in the form of benefits and rewards can do the work. But for a lasting solution, you can use task management software to streamline tasks and keep you updated on the duties you have to accomplish.
Communication Apps
Smooth communication between colleagues is vital to achieving seamless business operation, and there are social media apps available that could serve that purpose. However, when you use the same applications for personal and work messages, things can get disorganized real fast. Since the pandemic, there has been a rise in professionals using business-focused communication apps; data shows that users jumped from 75 million to 145 million. The increase in using work-related apps is not a surprise, as companies have resorted to flexible work options to keep employees safe. As a new business owner, you should also use these apps to get real-time updates from your staff regarding operations.
Inventory Management
If you deal with many items or use numerous materials to craft your products, ensuring that you have enough to go around to accommodate all your clients is paramount. Manually monitoring your inventory is ideal for small businesses. But eventually, you’ll have to keep up with more work as your venture expands. For the specific task of tracking your inventory, you can use an inventory management program to keep tabs on orders and items through the use of barcodes and tags.
Advertising Tools
Building a business means you have yet to create a name for yourself in the market. With the free tools available in social media, it’s relatively easy to establish your online presence. But if you lack promotional skills, introducing your brand to the public is complex. To aid you on this, you can use advertising software and programs that offer email marketing, social media posting, and even assist you in creating a website for your business. For instance, you can get a digital marketing company to assist you with the tasks mentioned earlier and gain strategies and techniques carefully tailored for your business.
Cloud Storage
With remote work, you and your team do not have the luxury of giving and receiving files and documents within the same physical space. Instead, you have to use emails and communication apps to send them. Though using emails in sending important documents is practical, it will leave you with disorganized assets in the long run. What you can do is use cloud storage to secure your files and allow your team to access their needed documents wherever they may be.
Using reliable apps and programs to enhance and maintain efficient operations will help you enter the business sphere easily, even with a pandemic.
