The days of wading through an endless sea of paperwork and post-it notes are over. Technology tools for business have increasingly become more powerful and less expensive over time, giving entrepreneurs access to the resources of a much larger corporation.
The right software can help streamline outdated processes, automate repetitive tasks, and set the foundations for growth at scale—without breaking the bank.
Here’s a list of our favorite affordable tech tools organized by category, to help time-strapped entrepreneurs do more with less.
Table of Contents
Google Calendar for appointments scheduling
HRIS solution
Marketing automation
Online documentation and training
Tasks and project management
Time tracking
How GajiCermat can help
1. Google Calendar for appointments scheduling
Old-school appointment scheduling often involved jotting down meeting details in a paper calendar or on whatever scraps of paper were close to hand. These inefficient and time-consuming methods made managing a busy schedule a struggle.
So how do you ensure you don’t miss an important meeting, or double-book a client call while juggling everything else you need to do to run a profitable operation?
One word: Google calendar. It’s a free tool that lets you plug in your calendar availability and match it with the availability of your guests for a seamless scheduling experience. Meetings become conflict-free, reminders can be automated, and it’s simple to reschedule when someone has to cancel at the last minute.
2. HRIS solutions
In a small business, HR team has so many tasks to do, from managing data of all the people in the office, input attendance data, to recruiting new hires. And it is boring and burdensome at some point since it is very time consuming, needs full attention & there is a lot of room for human error.
Leave the old-school way before your team burns out. Take a tour on the HRIS platform that can streamline HR tasks, like GajiCermat. Besides, not only running payroll in minutes by automation, with full stacks of GajiCermat’s HRIS and employee management features, you can also have your employee’s attendance data integrated into the system, auto deduct tax so it can eliminates human error, have a seamless on-/offboarding, track real-time attendance, and so much more.
3. Marketing automation
In the old days, keeping your brand top-of-mind with potential customers meant investing in flyers, magazine ads, strategic product placement, and good ol’ word of mouth. Unfortunately, glossy magazine ads and television commercials aren’t cheap. Small businesses were routinely left behind as big brands took more market share for themselves.
Now, scrappy startups have access to affordable online marketing tools that even the playing field. Platforms like ActiveCampaign let you segment different audiences and send engaging customer experiences across email, social media, live chat, and SMS. Ultimately making it easier for small business owners to drive engagement, nurture relationships with prospects, and ultimately convert them into paying customers.
4. Online documentation and training
Whether you’re hiring new staff or outsourcing work to freelance contractors, it’s important to give them the lay of the land from the beginning so they have everything they need to hit the ground running. In the past, this could mean sending a few dozen emails or cobbling together a binder of company guidelines.
The problem is, these directives or “brand bibles” are often out of date as soon as they’re created, essentially adding more work to your plate each time you onboard a new employee and have to update them.
Online documentation tools like Tango let you capture screenshots of your workflows, add text descriptions and annotations to walk viewers through a product or workflow, or share important knowledge with a client, contractor, or your team in seconds. Once you’ve documented your processes, they remain available going forward.
5. Tasks and project management
Before the rise of cloud-based task management software, project managers had to physically chase stakeholders, write endless email threads, and navigate clunky first-generation computer programs (if they could afford them, that is).
Software tools like Asana and Trello have transformed the project management landscape. These digital tools help you break down large projects into smaller tasks and better estimate the time needed to complete them. Workflows are completely customizable, making it simple to map tasks to a timeline and ensure every project goes off without a hitch.
6. Time tracking
How did entrepreneurs keep track of the hours they were spending on their business before technology? Some kept it simple; deciding on a weekly schedule and committing to “clocking in and out” at a time of their choosing. Others used more involved time tracking methods like the Pomodoro Technique where you set an egg timer for 25 minutes, focus on a task, and take a five minute break once your timer goes off. Both methods require diligently looking at the clock—and not much else.
Thankfully, now there’s an easier way to track your time and ensure you’re spending it in the most efficient way for your business. Enter Toggl Track, a time tracking app that not only lets you manage your work hours, but helps you break down the kind of work you’re doing into separate categories so you can see where you should be prioritizing your time. For example, looking at a breakdown of your billable and non-billable hours each week can help you discover your profitability. Working with a team? Toggl allows you to view hours for your whole team and generate custom reports in one intuitive dashboard.
7. How GajiCermat can help
When you’re an entrepreneur, outsourcing tedious (but important) tasks is a smart way to free up your time and run a more efficient small business. Having the right productivity stack can simplify your day-to-day operations and keep you focused on the activities that directly generate revenue.
GajiCermat can handle payroll to employee management so that you can focus on what you do best—running your business. GajiCermat, your team of HR experts automatically import attendance data, review, categorize taxes, and run payrolls. Your data is summarized in one simple dashboard, giving you up-to-date financial reports to save you time and help you make better business decisions.
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