Business management is a critical part of the success of an organization. Without that management in place, things can easily fall apart at the seams.
Whether you’re a small business in its first year or two of existence, or you’re responsible for a number of businesses, the management of these companies can be assisted with various tools and field service management software.
The right tools can help control the chaos that often ensues with business operations and balancing a number of plates all at once. Investing in business management can make sense when you see a tool like one of the below, in action.
In this guide, we’ll share the importance of business management and the five most popular business management tools out there currently.
What are business management tools?
By definition, business management tools or software are an application or set of programs that provide support to a business. Whether that’s improving current processes in place or automating them instead.
The software used can help with eliminating human error, completing business tasks with ease, and reporting on the activities of your employees. Ultimately, it’s a great source of information and a helping hand that many businesses can benefit from.
SaaS (software as a service) is a growing industry and which many of these tools and business management software fall under. Nearly 78% of small businesses have already invested in SaaS options, which means many are seeing the benefit of them.
Why are they important?
Business management tools can offer plenty of benefits for an organization or individuals responsible for overseeing the company’s day-to-day obligations.
The main benefit is that it boosts your efficiency as a business. When your employees are spending time on menial tasks that could be better spent elsewhere. With the right software or tools, you can help alleviate some of those mundane tasks. It’s why automation is so popular and a lot of these tools make good use of it.
This software can also prove useful in managing a lot of different tasks all at once. As far as technology goes, it does need humans to oversee it and monitor its performance. However, technology can do everything a lot quicker than humans could ever do on their own.
Again, it can help save a lot of time that many organizations can benefit from. Therefore whether it is marketing workflow management or inventory management for your business, choosing the right software makes all the difference.
Five popular business management tools to try
There are plenty of options out there when it comes to business management tools, so many in fact, that it can make it challenging to pick from.
However, there are a few that stand out when it comes to helping manage business processes and delivering great features that are incredibly worthwhile. Value for money is also important and all these tools are going to be worth the money spent on them.
Moreover, businesses that require detailed financial tracking often rely on tools like an Invoice Template for MS Excel to streamline invoicing and manage expenses efficiently.
1. Lightspeed for inventory management tool
Lightspeed is a great one to start off our list when it comes to inventory management. For many businesses, taking account of stock, whether it’s all sold online, in-store or both is challenging. The bigger a business becomes, the more inventory there is to be managed. This can be made easier with an inventory management tool.
This platform, in particular, is very popular for retail and hospitality businesses. Some of its key features include processing and completing work orders in the system. Creating product inventory with variations in color, material, and sizing.
It can also be useful for bundling individual items and can help tailor specific orders to suit the customer’s needs. It also helps track inventory in multiple locations, making it good for businesses with multiple stores.
For pricing, you can expect it to start from around £69 up to £199 for the premium versions.
2. Trello for team collaboration and communication
For team collaboration and communication, Trello is a great one to help bring together team members within a department to those across the organization as a whole. It can also be useful when you’re working with external groups or individuals and required a centralized hub for communication task management.
Trello is set up to offer an easy-to-use interface that makes it easy to keep in touch with all those involved in an ongoing project or team. It’s a Kanban-style, listing making layout and has helped many businesses already to collaborate in-office but also from remote locations too.
With 73% of all departments expecting have remote workers by 2028, it makes sense to have something like Trello in place for the future. Even if you’re not fully remote, after the pandemic, many organizations have shown that remote working is possible.
There are a range of prices available from free plans to premium and enterprise which is no more expensive than the work lunch you buy.
3. Venturz: The All-in-One Platform
Venturz is an all-in-one platform built to help startups manage, grow, and streamline their operations from a single, unified space. Designed for early-stage companies, Venturz brings together essential tools like project management, CRM, and website building, making it easy for teams to stay organized and focused.
The platform also includes features to boost engagement and collaboration, such as a community forum, team inbox, and social media management tools. These help startups connect with their audience, maintain brand presence, and manage communications efficiently.
With Venturz, startups can improve workflows, enhance customer interactions, and make data-driven decisions, thanks to built-in analytics and streamlined operations—all in a single platform.
4. Hubspot for marketing
Hubspot is widely known as being an effective management platform for all things marketing. You’ll have everything you need to help run campaigns successfully and that deliver great results.
Ultimately, you want to generate leads and improve conversions of those leads. With Hubspot, the platform helps sync up your teams and engaging your audience through campaigns that are aligned with your business’ potential.
The Marketing Hub Professional gives everything that a marketing team could want in order to automate campaigns, collaborate and deliver ROI.
If you need to run advanced analytics, HubSpot supports various integrations for exporting data to external tools, e.g., Hubspot to BigQuery.
5. nTask for smaller businesses and entrepreneurs
For those smaller businesses and solopreneurs with few projects at a time, the business can be managed with nTask.
This business software helps to manage all elements of the business and any employees that you have. It is a little complex to understand, so it will take some training in order to get used to.
There are some good features to the platform though from time tracking, project risks and budgets, risk analytics and checklists. Over 250,000 users take advantage of this platform, so it’s definitely worth trying.
nTask is completely free for those looking for 100MB of storage. The pricing for premium plans starts from $2.99 per user per month.
6. Timecamp for time-tracking and business productivity
Keeping track of time can be challenging for some and getting all of the work required for the day done can often feel impossible. However, procrastination and a lack of workload balance between employees can lead to a lack of business productivity.
A software like Timecamp is a great solution for business management when it comes to time-tracking. Whether you’re looking to track the activities of a computer user to productivity monitoring, it can be helpful to have something like this in place.
Some of its top features include seamless integrations with accounts, CRM, and project management software. There’s a desktop and mobile app available for many devices and platforms.
The interface of this tool is easy to use and so all employees can take advantage of their own time monitoring, as well as supervisors/managers keeping track too.
Timecamp provides a demo version that any business user can try before buying. We highly recommend this as it ensures you’ve got the right tool for your needs. The tool is completely free to use but does have premium memberships for additional features on top of its already generous offerings.
7. Omnify for Booking and Scheduling
Omnify is a highly sought-after booking and scheduling software designed to cater to service businesses in industries such as fitness, wellness, recreation, sports, and learning. Its user-friendly platform enables businesses to manage appointments, classes, events, and memberships efficiently.
You will get a range of powerful features to manage your business with ultimate ease.
Omnify gives you the power of a personalized Service Store to optimize your sales via an efficient display of service offerings. With Seamless Scheduling, you can easily empower your clients to manage bookings and subscriptions. Other than that, simplifying communication with clients and staff through automated email functionalities, Timely payment collection options to ensure punctual payments, advanced analytics to make informed decisions, Online Waivers, Automated Waitlists, Membership Management, and so much more.
If you need your other favorite tools, Omnify supports various integrations with Zapier for enhanced productivity.
Moreover, Omnify offers flexible pricing, starting from a Forever Free Plan up to $499/mo as is suitable for small, medium, and large enterprises.
Transform and streamline your business operations today with Omnify.
8. Beaconstac for marketing and engagement
Marketing and user engagement are the gateways of digital discovery. These are extremely crucial for seamless blending of the real and virtual worlds, magnifying marketing potential like never before.
Beaconstac’s QR Code Generator lets you bridge the gap between the physical and digital realms, propelling your marketing efforts to new heights. With this platform, you can create, manage and track QR Codes, from URLs and contact details to product details and promotions effortlessly.
With customization at its core, you can enhance your brand’s identity by adding logos, colors, and designs to QR Codes, transforming them into compelling visual elements.
Beaconstac offers built-in analytics for you to track and gain insights into the performance of your QR Codes. This is in addition to the Google Analytics integration that gives you unique user insights like demographics, behaviors, and interests.
The solution also has 4000+ integrations with CRMs, sales and automation tools like Workato and Zapier, and even HR tools. Beaconstac is also one of the safest QR Code makers out there. It is GDPR and SOC-2 Type II compliant, ensuring your QR Codes are free from phishing or malware attacks.
9. Scribe for Creating Step-by-Step Guides
Scribe is the perfect process documentation solution for growing teams. The AI-powered tool captures your screen to turn any workflow into a visual guide — complete with text, links and annotated screenshots.
Walk colleagues or contractors through any workflow without losing time. It’s the perfect addition to any project management system, helping you train teammates and build SOPs in seconds.
Scribe integrates with thousands of tools, including Confluence, Notion and Sharepoint.
What Scribe excels in:
- Easy-to-create and share step-by-step guides.
- Collaboration features with feedback functionality.
- Hundreds of available templates for different process needs.
- Share via link or embed in any tool.
- Scribe Sidekick opens to show guides for the site you’re on.
What Scribe could stand to improve:
- Some of its best features, such as screenshot redaction and smart blur, are only available on Paid plans.
What features to look out for in a business management tool
When looking at a business management tool, there are a number of features to look out for. Here are some of those features that are worthwhile knowing so that you can make the righ decision on these company management tools.
Time management – Knowing exactly how much time you have to complete tasks or what deadlines are upcoming can be crucial. Calendars and time-trackers are therefore useful to have when it comes to business management software and time tracking.
Project and task management – Outlining all the relevant tasks within a project, to assigning all the relevant duties to each employee fairly, can be made easier with a project or task management element to the platform.
Team collaboration – Without communication and team collaboration, a lot of projects can fall apart and fall short of what you were aiming to achieve. Having the ability to communicate efficiently is handy.
Document sharing – Documenting sharing is a great way to help communicate and deliver the necesssary data to a group of team members or a specific individual. It’s also a great way to help share custom forms too.
CRM & sales – Keeping your customers or clients happy is crucial, and therefore, a lot of focus as a business should be on your customer satisfaction and the sales you’re delivering to the business. A business management system that acts as a CRM, which can manage the entire quote to cash process, is helpful to keep track of sales. By automating tasks such as pricing, invoicing, and payment processing, you can streamline the sales process and reduce the risk of errors.
This can help to ensure customer satisfaction and increase the likelihood of repeat business. In addition, a CRM system can provide valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences, which can help you tailor your sales approach to better meet their needs.
Budgeting/ Invoice – Managing budgets is part of creating a successful business, so it’s good to have all the tools necessary to create detailed budgets and high-quality invoicing and expenses.
Inventory management – Managing a volume of inventory can be challenging, regardless of the size. That’s why it’s crucial to manage and plan your inventory accordingly.
Invest in a business management tool for your business
In 2022, it’s important to keep up with your comeptitotrs and to utilize your time efficiently. It’s why many are choosing to invest in business management tools this year.
Author Bio: Natalie Redman (LinkedIn)
Freelance writer for many clients across multiple industries. Natalie has two years of copywriting experience. Natalie has a wide range of experience copywriting for web pages for businesses across many industries. She’s also an owner of two blog websites and a Youtube content creator.
