Small Business Management - Tools, Applications and Resources
Staying competitive in today’s economy is becoming highly contingent on your mastery of your business productivity. There are thousands of resources online for business productivity and helpful applications, which can earn you an advantage over your competitors and help you serve your customers better. The problem is that there are thousands of resources! It’s hard to wade through all of them even if you know what you’re looking for, and most often small business owners need a little guidance to begin to know where to look for these tools. So, let’s help you fix that right now!
Accounting and Bookkeeping: Use Quicken to manage your accounting. Use TurboTax to do your tax filing (or, if your taxes are extremely complex, use the Yellow Pages online to look up a CPA or tax-preparation firm)
Finance: Talk to your bank about online banking programs and small business applications. Citibank and Bank of America have programs for small businesses to help them with common financial tasks such as payroll, check ledgers, and loans.
Word Processing and Spreadsheets: Google Docs and Spreadsheets make a fine replacement for Microsoft Word and Excel, although Google’s applications are not as feature-rich as the Microsoft Office Standards. However, if you’re composing simple documents and lists, the big advantage here is that you can store unlimited documents and data online, access those files anywhere an internet connection exists, and output the results into files compatible with Word and Excel when you’re ready! (This entry is being typed in Google Docs & Spreadsheets right now!) Documents and spreadsheets can also use online collaboration features that you could only get previously through a complicated networking setup for Microsoft Office, and it works great for project management over the web from remote locations.
Invoicing: Blinksale makes your invoicing easy and professional.
Office Supplies: Don’t poke through a printed catalog. Go to Staples.com
Communications: Use Google Apps for Your Domain to install Gmail and Google Talk on a hosted account. Gmail uses an extremely efficient email client over the web, accessible anywhere, and also has the ability to connect to your preferred email client software. Google Talk is a simple but efficient messaging application.
Marketing: visit marketing blogs such as Marktd to get ideas. Use a diagram application like Gliffy to visualize your strategies. Use Paint.NET or The GIMP for your graphic design. Use Google Docs and Spreadsheets for your copywriting. Use ConstantContact for email marketing services.
Research: if you ever need information, it’s Google, Google, Google! Also, check out Wikipedia when researching a topic (Wikipedia is open to be edited by anyone, so it is recommended that you use Wikipedia articles to gain a starting point only for information on an in-depth topic) and look on About.com for practical everyday information. And if you want to be more thorough in your searches, you can use search engines at Yahoo!, MSN Search, and Ask.com.
Have any other small business resources to share? Post them in the comments section!