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Eleven online tools every entrepreneur must use in 2017
Here are the Top 11 Online Business Tools Every Entrepreneur Must Use in 2017
This is a user generated content for MyStory, a YourStory initiative to enable its community to contribute and have their voices heard. The views and writings here reflect that of the author and not of YourStory.
I work with many Entrepreneurs across the globe and help them saasify their businesses. #KloudConnectors were also awarded as Top 20 Most Promising SaaS Solution Providers in 2017 by CIOReview India Magazine recently. Based on my experience, I am recommending 11 Online tools every Entrepreneur must use in 2017.
1. Customer Relationship Management:
We believe that this is the single most important tool that every entrepreneur should use. CRM tools basically help with Marketing automation, sales automation, and support automation. There are various tools that we like in this space. These tools are as follows:
Salesforce
Customer Relationship Management
2. Email Marketing system:
Email marketing is very important tools for sending out newsletters, campaigns, nurturing your leads etc We strongly recommend MailChimp and constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, iContact, Zoho Campaigns which are leaders in this field.
Email Marketing system:
3. Project Management suite:
If you are working on various projects, project management systems help you to track all your projects in a single system. There are various tools that one can use. But we recommend Asana, Trello, Zoho Projects for this.
4. Online HelpDesk system:
Customer support is a very important function of the business. There are various online help desk software. We like Zoho Help Desk, FreshDesk, and ZenDesk in this category. We use Zoho Help Desk.
Zoho Helpdesk
5. Analytics:
It is important to know about your website visitors and we recommend none other than Google Analytics in this category. This a free tool and gives you actionable insights into your website visitors.
Google Analytics
6. Social Media Marketing:
Social Media marketing has become an integral part of the business. Posting on all the accounts can be very cumbersome and tracking them all is even more difficult. One should use tools which help in posting on various platforms and also allow one to track all the conversations in a single window. We like HooteSuite and Bufferly in this space. We use HooteSuite for managing our social media accounts.
HooteSuite and Bufferly
7. Bookkeeping / Accounting software:
Online accounting is fun and helps you to improve your cash flow. One can create invoices while traveling, book expenses in the real time and keep your accounting system up to date. Also, most of these online Softwares have banks feeds directly getting imported in the system automatically for easy bank reconciliation. This saves tons of time and allows entrepreneurs to do their accounting easily by themselves. We like ZohoBooks, Xero, QuickBooks Online, FreeAgent, Kashflow, FreshBooks in this segment. We recommend and use ZohoBooks.
Zoho Books
8. Online web chat:
One can interact with the customer directly when they visit your website. This can lead to better customer satisfaction and also improve your revenue. Getting answers real time through online chat is a great experience for the customer. There are few very popular software in this segment like Zopim ( acquired by ZenDesk), LiveChat, Zoho SalesIq etc. We like Zoho SalesIq as it also integrates well with our CRM system and HelpDesk system. It also gives you real insights about the customers when they visit your website. We recommend ZohoSalesIq.
9. Evernote:
We strongly recommend Evernote. This can be useful for anyone to capture notes during customer visits, meetings. You can take notes during the discussions, meetings and record it on Evernote. Once you are back in the office, you can also sync these notes with your CRM system if you are using connectors for syncing.
Evernote
10. Business Collaboration Suite /Document creators:
Google Business suite which consists of Gmail, google docs, google hangout is an excellent suite for online collaboration and run your business completely online. We also like Zoho Suite which has Google Doc equivalent Zoho Docs and Zoho Mail. Zoho also has Zoho sites like Google sites. We recommend Google Suite and Zoho Docs.
11. Integration Tool - KLOUDCONNECTORS
There are many cloud integration tools which help you to attain the highest level of productivity. These cloud integration platforms integrate and sync your data across these cloud systems. Although there are lots of choices, we would strongly recommend KloudConnectors as they not only sync data but also integrate your business processes in different clouds. Eg. If you create an invoice through CRM system, it automatically creates that invoice in the accounting system and also when the invoice is marked as paid, it marks that invoice as paid in your CRM system. There is also a blog written on the differences between KloudConnectors and other integration tool called Zapier.
About the Author:
Mr. Vinay Joshi is a founder and CEO of Suvichar Technologies Pvt Ltd and cloud integration platform called KloudConnectors. Vinay and his team are helping businesses across the globe to implement SaaS based business apps. KloudConnectors provides off the shelf kloud connectors to integrate cloud apps in cloud. KloudConnectors also builds custom connectors based on customer's requirements. KloudConnectors has customers in 88 countries and growing rapidly.