Thursday, March 28

5 Best Online Tools for Startups and SME’S To Increase Productivity

In our fast-paced changing lives surrounded by technology “all-around”, competition to excel is enormous. A strong online presence today is not only a “norm” rather a “necessity”. Any budding startup or small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) today requires a strong online presence not only for marketing or expanding its customer base but also to embark on a journey that could bring in brand value and recognition.

Launching a startup is surely a demanding task! Yet, starting is not as difficult as most people make it appear so. There could be absolutely no better time starting a company owing to the modern fast-paced lives we are living today. The competition today is “massive”, but so are the resources!

While the Internet does not provide any space for procrastination, it does offer resources that could enhance work productivity by many folds.Whether you are juggling between emails, working on website development, keeping abreast of your social networks or simply searching for a multimedia resource website, there are tremendous options that can end up leaving you all confused.To ease the confusion, we have made things super simple for you by listing down top 5 best must have startup applications that could make things run in a breeze in your everyday work life!

 

 

Slack- Business and Team Communication Made Simple!

A beautiful and absolutely handy chat application that can facilitate smooth team and business communication, Slack has become increasingly popular and that too in no time.

Slack lets teams organize themselves into groups, share files and easily keep track of notifications, and files. The app data gets automatically synced on your devices while offering an option to connect with other applications such as Skype and WordPress too.

A user can create many channels within the app to talk about different topics. With its inbuilt machine learning tool, Slack builds a searchable archive to find just the right information in hand without the need to scan the entire chat archives. With Slack in your presence, you can head away brainstorming ideas, asking questions and looking for suggestions all accessible under one roof. Trello is another useful alternative to Slack that will cover all your needs catering to team communication and messaging. Otherwise, you can consider using RocketChat, Ryver.

 

Asana-Project Management Under One Roof

Available as a web and mobile application, Asana makes project management happen in the most convenient form bringing multiple features to the user’s access.

Aimed at simplifying team collaboration, Asana primarily focuses on managing projects and tasks together without needing e-mail communication.Asana lets you encounter multifaceted features which are:

  • Prepare reports and share it with your team keeping track of how’s the work progressing and what requires immediate attention.

 

  • Asana also works on a central admin system wherein one can keep a tight control on security measures so that the organization data is free from any misuse.

 

  • Timeline creation, one important aspect of project management can be easily managed by the Asana platform. A user can put together as well visualize different pieces of his project, track changes and make updations as and when required.

Alternatives to Asana can be Trello and Podio both work best for project management and are well suited to favor startups and small and medium scale organizations.

 

 

SurveyMonkey- Know Your Customers!

Building a customer base is perhaps the most crucial step to startup growth. In order to analyze what your customer needs or thinks of your product, a survey tool is a must! SurveyTool is one such application that lets a user create, design, collect as well as analyze surveys.
They have loads of in-house templates that can be used to design a general survey.The Typeform feature helps in designing more attractive and intuitive templates for the survey.

Surveys can be sent via email, social media accounts as well as directly through the web.There is also a survey metric feature that helps to predict the response much before it is carried out. All in all, this is one super helpful application to analyze your customers, research market needs and plans your product building strategies.

Consider using GetFeedback or QuestionPro for SurveyMonkey like aligned features available in both free and premium version.

 

 

RescueTime-It’s all about Time Management!

This is one must to have application to track time and boost work productivity at your startup.With hundred responsibilities to be managed daily, it is easy to get distracted or delayed from your work timelines.This is where RescueTime comes as a savior.

It runs in the background closely analyzing user’s activity and then calculates time spent on different websites giving a better clarity on how too proceed for the day.It has some other helpful features to that help in better time management such as:

  • It lets you set reminders and alerts to move across in case you are spending too much time on a particular website or activity.

 

  • Based on its analysis, it gives suggestions on which sites to avoid to manage time.

 

  • Lastly, it displays a report of things accomplished in a day for a better picture and understanding.

TimeDoctor and Toggl are other software available in the demo as well as paid versions that can be used in place of RescueTime too.

 

 

Venngage-Content Infographic Maker

Compelling Content curation and marketing has radically taken over the conventional content creation methods.While magazine or newspaper ads might help you advertise your services, the traffic you get to drive from your online blog can be tremendous. This, in turn, will directly translate to higher conversion rate making site visitors convert to paid customers if the right action and message get across.

But, how about a software that could help you create enticing content in the form of infographics? Log In to Venngage!

With its predefined templates, you can build infographics easily and even add color and images from the library for a better visual appeal.It also allows customization letting users add their own images, fonts, and graphics for a better experience.

Venngage is available for free but you will have to dish out some cash in case you want to access the premium features.For a more creative alignment, refer Infogram or Easel.ly.

With the list made easy, it is the best time to look into these top online startup tools to enhance your work productivity and take your business growth a notch higher!