Most startups often struggle to manage limited resources. Perhaps you, the business owner, has a valuable skill set and expertise that can bring your company to the next level. However, administrative tasks can bog you down, making it difficult for you to micromanage your business.
Remember, running a successful company means understanding how best to invest your resources to achieve your business goals.
Here are great automation tools that have helped Caffeinated to stay focused on enhancing products and services they provide.
Remember Passwords
If you have been using Google spreadsheet or Post-It notes for the passcodes that guard your digital life, 2018 is the year this habit stops. 1Passwords and 1Passwords for Teams make everything easier for you and your tea.
The software allows you to collect, generate, and recall all your complex passwords without remembering them. This minimizes the instances of lost passwords or time wastage when trying to recover forgotten passcodes.
Outsourcing Simple Work
Two of the giant online outsourcing sites oDesk and Elance merged in 2014 and launched Upwork in 2015. If you are a newbie in hiring a remote worker and outsourcing tasks, this is a great place to start.
Upwork allows you to post a job, choose your favorite candidate from anywhere in the world, and get all the necessary tasks completed in time. Outsourcing tasks create enough time for you to focus on the most important aspects of your business – growth.
Ordering Lunch
Postmates allows you to save the time you would have otherwise wasted when going to buy lunch. It’s simply an Uber-for-food delivery service popular for simplifying the process of ordering and reordering meals while in the office. Indeed, Postmates brings all the local restaurants to you. Thus, you don’t have to waste time driving.
Track your work
One of the most difficult parts of a growing company, particularly for service business) is knowing exactly where each project is in your workflow. Fortunately, Pipefy makes everything easy. The software allows you to create a ‘pipeline’ and move all your projects through various stages. The tool offers you an opportunity to automate emails, alerts, tasks, and other work integrations.
Learning a language
Well, it’s wise to learn a new language if you have the time. Consider learning Polish, Czech, French, German, and more. Okay, perhaps you may think of downloading Google Translate (Android and iOS).
However, the app can be a lifesaver if you are in a foreign country. Simply open the app on your mobile device, point it at a sign or a menu, and it will translate all foreign words into your desired language. Though it’s not perfect, it can help sometimes.
Client services
Are you still sharing email box to receive orders or provide client support services? If yes, this is the year you should stop this madness. All you need is a great ticketing software.
Help Scout is software that impressed most users last year, and you may want to try it. Its simple design makes the entire process of getting started a breeze. Besides, the software’s contact forms suggest answers to your clients to help cut down an incoming message.
Responding to phone calls
Does your phone interrupt you when busy? You probably need a receptionist. However, you don’t need an in-house receptionist. For approximately $70 weekly, Ruby Receptionist can easily team with a professional to serve as a first of defense in the fight against all the distractions associated with incoming calls.
Note that the Ruby Receptionist can offer simple info, transfer all calls that meet your criteria, and take messages for you.
Keep in touch with your clients
When some of my clients tell me that word of mouth is their primary source of referrals, I wonder how they successfully track the last time they spoke with all their leading referrers. If you aren’t sure of a tool that can help you keep in touch with all your clients, why don’t you try Contactually?
The software allows you to identify your top relationships. This makes it easier for you to make regular and effective follow-ups. Besides, the tool also helps you to schedule follow-ups and thus, you can successfully close more business deals.
Schedule employees
One of the biggest and most challenging chores is juggling different calendars and organizing them into a clear monthly schedule. The good news is that when I work open shifts feature can be very helping in eliminating all the challenges associated with scheduling employees.
The platform allows employees to trade shifts with others or even pick up the available tasks without you, their boss, lifting your finger. Once you set up the platform, organizing all your future monthly schedules will become easier. You will be simply copying and pasting the previous work schedule with a single click, edit, and publish it whenever required to do so within a few seconds.
Bookkeeping and accounting
For most startups, bookkeeping and accounting isn’t a walk in the park. It’s an office task that tends to take much of your time, and when done incorrectly, it can result in financial mismanagement. However, automating these tasks saves time and enhances accuracy.
Therefore, consider starting with File This and make all your financial statements paperless. You can also synchronize these statements to your preferred cloud storage folder including Dropbox, Evernote, or Google Drive.
You can share this folder with your Bench Bookkeeper, an option that lets you reconcile all your bookkeeping data and creates easy to understand financial statements without you having to lift a finger.
Invoices and bill payments
Have you ever realized that the process of creating invoices and paying bills tend to be a large part of the running a startup? However, these tasks should not take up more than two minutes of your time.
Therefore, consider speeding up your business invoicing process using Freshbooks. The platform allows you to track your billable hours and business expenses. You can also generate and share online invoices with your clients.
Shoeboxed or Scannable can help you automate the storage of financial records such as receipts. If you have a lot of invoices and bills to be handled each month, consider sending them over to Bill.com, and the app will take care of all other activities.
Working with data
One of the most amazing things is how multi-million dollar companies are run on a simple spreadsheet. The existence of Fieldbook gives business owners more effective data platforms. Fieldbook allows you to create several spreadsheets that are connected to form something like a database. That means you can sort, filter, view, and search volumes of business-related data.
Automating social media activities
You no longer need to spend hours trying to post on your business social media channels. Unlike most social media posts scheduling software, Edgar allows you to store all your social media posts in an online library.
This app can also recycle your social media content by reposting it to your followers and fans on a rotating schedule. Therefore, if social media takes much of your precious time, this app can help.
There is no doubt, the tools discussed in this article will help you automate most of your business activities and get enough time to focus on growing your business.
