13 Must-Have Small Business Tools To Boost Productivity

If you are new to the business, running it on a small scale, you are perhaps already working to expand it and boost its productivity margin. However, for small-scale business owners, the time available to upscale productivity is limited and needs to be optimized as quickly as possible. Therefore, it’s wise and important to adopt some of the best productivity tools that can competently manage crucial business functions. For functions like product and brand promotion, attaining customer emails, administering the online business, etc. some tools can be really instrumental in accelerating your productivity. The trick is in identifying the right tools amidst the galaxy of options.

For those, who are confused about the type of tools, here is a classified list of tools that a small business usually needs - :

• Accounting & Bookkeeping Tools
• Sales & CRM Tools
• Meeting and Productivity Tools
• Marketing Tools
• Customer Success Tools
  
  

To make it easier, we prepared a list of suggested small business productivity tools:

1. Hubspot CRM

Hubspot is a CRM solution, often called the flagbearer of proficient sales and marketing tools. With its commendable features that keep a track of every bit of customer interactions and provide a detailed overview of the sales channel anytime, Hubspot is often considered one of the best productivity tools that can accelerate the conversion rates.

With Hubspot CRM, you can

• Track emails,
• Send kickback mails,
• Receive the analytical reports,
• Organize lead capture forms,
• Avail live chat features with the customers,
• Set up sales meetings and

Most importantly, it offers free trial options for its products that make it dazzle in the crowd of other CRMs.

1. Slack

Slack is a cost-effective tool that uses its instant messaging feature to optimize business communication and networking processes within the team. It allows users to check the flow of emails back and forth with their peers in the organization.

Features that push Slack into this list are:

• It provides multiple channels like voice calling, video conferencing, and screen sharing to optimize communication and its effectiveness
• It does not charge anything to the teams of up to 10 members
• It keeps the entire discussion of a meeting in a single chat, thereby preventing any sort of confusion or misinterpretations
• It allows jotting down the minutes of the meetings and saving them automatically in Dropbox and Google Drive as attachments
• Enlisting the important tasks in the to-do list of the task manager

In the virtual world, slack has all the potential to be regarded as your virtual HQ.

1. Appointo
   

If you need an application to schedule bookings on the website and manage appointments, Appointo is the best option. With some exceptional automated features, it can effectively boost your productivity by saving time and improving your service quality.

The advanced features of Appointo that make it stand out are -

• Custom booking rules
• Group appointments
• 2-way calendar integrations
• Marketing of services
• Simplified calendar
• export bookings
• Automated zoom integration
• Teams dashboard outside Shopify
• Complete Shopify theme compatibility
• Multiple-language assistance
  
  

1. Evernote
   

Evernote is a super-useful note-keeping app that organizes notes, tasks, scheduled appointments/meetings, all in one place. Links, images, voice notes, web page clippings can be attached to form a checklist or grid of notes.

Other enticing key features are-

• Sync with the google calendar
• Schedule notifications and reminders
• Save the ad-free web pages and also highlight them
• Makes business paperless
• Reminds the deadlines on time
  

1. Buffer
   

With affordable internet and social media, on average, people spend approximately 2.5 hours every day on social media. Buffer knows how to make the best of this! Buffer is an exciting social media management tool that can easily take the social media engagements of your business to the next level.

The key features of the Buffer app include -

• Manage Campaign performance in a few clicks
• Collaborate with profiles on multiple platforms simultaneously
• Pre- Schedule multiple posts together
• Reports and analytics
• Available in Mobile app and Buffer browser extension
  

1. Asana

Asana is a flexible, efficient, and easy-to-use task management tool that allows you to auto-assign tasks to available team members and keep a track of the same.  With Asana, you can view plans, discuss them and check progress all in a single platform. The impressive user interface and versatility contribute to the popularity of Asana in the market as a project management tool.

Also, the features that make it the star of the crowd are:

• Descriptive & Customizable Dashboards.
• Detailed Activity Feeds.
• Individual Task Lists.
• Assign Subtasks.
• Fix priority for tasks.
• Calendar customization.
• Integration of Email Ids.
• Notifications & Reminders.

With Asana you always stay on top of your team's work plans and progress.

1. Canva
   

Canva could be an asset for your business and its growth. It's an outstanding designing tool with pre-formatted as well as customizable templates for all kinds of events like marketing flyers, social media banners, professional and informal letters, reports, presentations, and other documents. The fascinating layouts of Canva lead can bring in huge online engagement for your business and give a major boost to your marketing efforts.

Features that make Canva every user's favorite designing tool are:

• Exceptionally User-friendly. No prior “Graphic Designer” experience required
• Versatile Platform, available on Web and mobile apps.
• Allows team collaboration on designs
• Substantial Free features
  

For brand promotion, Canva can be used to create and design logos, social media posts, charts, etc. for multiple social media platforms.

1. Grammarly

Grammarly is a simple and super-efficient online writing assistant which keenly evaluates your write-up to enhance its impact and amplify the tone of professionalism in it. This tool acts as a proofreader to maintain the eloquence of written business communications. Apart from rectifying the errors, Grammarly also provides AI-enabled suggestions to improve the quality of your writing, making it less wordy and more readable.

Features:

• AI-enabled grammar and spelling check with explanation
• Google Doc, browser, and MS word integration
• Personal Dictionary
• Secured and encrypted documents
• Versatile availability, web, and mobile
• One user per account

1. Toggl
   

Toggl is an extremely simple and easy-to-use time tracking tool that keeps track of everyday tasks that consume your time. This web and desktop tool allows you to have complete control over your time by providing useful insights on how and on what you spent it. If used well, Toggl can be helpful in optimizing workflow by identifying tasks or areas where time improvements can be made.

Features that make Toggl different are:

• Invigilates the tasks performed
• Keeps a record of the duration of the client meetings
• Monitors the logged-in hours of team members.
• Pomodoro timer; reminds the team members to take a break after each stretch of 25 minutes.
• Notifies about the idle time
  

To conclude, Toggl caters to the role of a timekeeper.

1. OneTimeSecret  https://onetimesecret.com/about
   

One time secret is a tool for sharing sensitive and confidential information simply and securely It was initially launched as a password sharing app but eventually, it became one of the most used channels for sharing several types of other sensitive information.

Features to look out for:

• Shared for one-time viewing; self-destructive feature of the messages.
• Non viewed secrets are retained for 7-14 days
• Substantially long message size allowed for sharing
• The code is available open-source on Github
  

With more than 50000 messages a month shared over the platform, Onetimesecret is a promiscuous option for sharing secret information.

1. Alfred app
   

Alfred is an acclaimed macOS-based productivity application that accelerates team efficiency wIth hotkeys, text expansion, predefined keywords, much more.  It is a free tool, much more than an application launcher with exceptional features. But, most of us do what we do, make a quick command- space, type what we want, enter, and go!

Alfred App has so much more to do, some of which we don’t even know!

• Personalized search and pin the prioritized results on the Mac or web history
• Quick access to contacts- search by name or even e-mail name
• Deep integration with macOS.
• Perform calculation on Alfred, without a calculator.
• Save snippets for frequently used texts

1. Cleanshot
   

CleanShot X is one of the most flexible and easy-to-use tools for Mac that allows quick screen capturing, customization and sharing. It’s a tiny tool that makes customized screen capturing and sharing an easy-breezy task to do!

Features that make Cleanshot the best choice are:

• Save, make copies and move screenshots and video recording into different folders
• Annotation tools highlight important sections of the screenshots
• Upload into Cloud storage and get a sharable link
• Scroll Screenshot
• Store in video and GIF formats
• Copy texts from the screenshots
  
  

1. Loom
   

Loom is a savior for businesses with hybrid workplaces. It is one of the finest and fastest screencasting applications to record video content, designed to facilitate unhindered communications in the workplace.

The most appreciated features of Loom include:

• Share pre-recorded video content
• No watermarks
• HD recording
• Password-protected videos and restricted access feature
• Embed videos into blogs or websites
• Editing and duplicating the video clips
  

Wrapping Up

Having the best set of productivity tools at your disposal can work wonders for the growth of your business. All the tools mentioned above are worth investing in, as they reap a lot but cost very little.

The following factors should be considered before choosing the software:

• Cost
• Robustness
• Proficiency of use
• Popularity
• Accounting properties.

These softwares aid in the exponential growth of your business when utilized strategically.