Every business is a complex system in which a manager has to coordinate people, projects, financial flows, and interact with customers. Because there are so many tasks owners and managers are required to handle, business efficiency can greatly decline if supported by good systems. In this article, the reader will discover 10 of the most effective tools to help manage essential business processes and increase productivity.  

1. Asana - Project Management

Asana is one of the widely used project management tools for today’s generation of project managers. It allows teams to create a common space for the creation of projects, the distribution of tasks, and time management. Main features are the dependencies between tasks, the possibility to set up milestones, comments, files, and templates. Asana offers paid features to accommodate all business sizes, as well as a free version for small teams. Asana has a simple yet functional interface with numerous helpful features, which makes it suitable for managing projects.

2. Trello - Task Management

Similar to Asana, Trello also uses lists and cards for a team to structure work and track projects. But its free-form board layout is best suited for the Kanban style of project management. Teams can subdivide projects into actionable steps, use labels, due dates, attachments, and many other options to manage responsibilities. Trello has such convenient features as calendars and boards to enhance the control of tasks and operations. Trello is quite easy to recommend for its flexible pricing plans and ability to effectively manage individual and team daily tasks.  

3. Slack - Team Communication

Instant messaging has become a standard in the modern workplace. Slack’s vision is to become a one-stop shop for team communication for enhanced cooperation. Some of the them are: Direct messaging, private channels, integrations with third-party apps, sharing of files, video and voice calling among others. It is possible to build open channels regarding topics, projects, teams and can discuss the updates in real time. Slack has multiple pricing plans to suit the needs of users in teams and is regarded very valuable for improving efficiency in communication and increasing transparency.

4. Zoho Books – Financial Management

It is also worth noting that a solid accounting mechanism is the basis for observing business finances. Zoho Books provides basic accounting functionalities as well as extra selling and reporting tools to provide a broader perspective of the financial activities. The features worth noting include multiple currency handling, invoices, double-entry bookkeeping, inventory, expenses, and graphical view. Zoho Books also connects with other Zoho business apps and offers cheap paid tiers for every business type.  

5. Mailchimp - Email Marketing

Using email to reach the audiences are still crucial today. One of the most popular email marketing platforms is Mailchimp which offers simple templates and automation tools for beginners. To manage email marketing processes, businesses can: import contacts, customize templates, set up sign-up forms, generate analytical reports, and more. Being a popular platform for audience management, Mailchimp offers a free version of its service for up to 2000 subscribers.

6. Dropbox - Cloud Storage

Working on files can be cumbersome if the teams do not share a common access point. Dropbox provides a perfect file synchronizing and sharing in the cloud perfect for teams working in separate departments. It allows users to store, retrieve, modify, distribute and co-author files from one central repository. It provides features like file version history, remote wipe, and priority tech support plans that make Dropbox a safe bet for managing cross-team file-sharing. 

7. Square - Payroll Management

Square’s range of tools is designed to help business owners navigate their check, payment processing, POS, invoice, inventory, loan and much more, making financial tasks easier. Employee payroll services, payments, analytics, lending solutions, and other functionalities are available on a single platform. Square operates for as low as $20 monthly, effectively organizing key financial tasks into simple applications. 

8. Hootsuite is a social media management tool

Using multiple social networks is redundant when one cannot manage them on a single platform. It is a social media tool that enables businesses to post, schedule, and monitor messages for social networks, engage with audiences and measure the success of their campaigns. For instance, users can link many team members, pages, and networks for convenience in managing them in one place. Since it has tiers for businesses of all sizes, Hootsuite is very popular to manage extensive social media responsibilities.  

9. Salesforce - CRM

Sales and marketing: CRM software assists in managing all customer information in one place. Salesforce saves contacts, activity logs, communication history, files, service case details and much more to offer full customer view. This information can be applied for creating precise campaigns, work flows, sales opportunities and much more by the teams. While not very simple, once these have been designed, especially in the case of Salesforce, the processes for managing customers are eased especially where some of the workflows are complicated.

10. QuickBooks - Accounting Software

QuickBooks is an accounting software designed to handle the standard, day-to-day financial tasks, including invoicing and inventory tracking. It can be used to prepare and send invoices, scan receipts, monitor sales and expenses, and process payroll and many other tasks through simplified accounting procedures. The application provides rich reporting capabilities where users can create graphical reports of company balances. While primarily targeting small businesses, QuickBooks does not doubt in simplifying the day-to-day accounting chores into handy tools.

Change may be inevitable, but when it comes to adopting new tools, it is a small price to pay for the advancement. As you will notice, each person may have different requirements; nonetheless, the software solutions outlined above refer to successful solutions for managing business processes. Instead of tracking tasks, teams can use reliable systems to centralize numerous key operations to concentrate on how to advance priorities. Including several tools from this list can help avoid countless hours wastefully spent on ineffective workflows. The essence is to define the key issues that require the use of tools, choose the appropriate ones, and understand that this is a never-ending process.