Startup Tools to Help Your Business Grow Quicker and Smarter

Startups are like babies that need to be nurtured while they are young and growing. But a startup can also be expensive to run. New digital tools, such as practice management system software within the healthcare sector as an example, can help new business owners run their new businesses successfully while keeping operational and technological costs down. There’s a digital business tool available for every sphere of running a business. Here’s a list of essential tools that your startup could benefit from.

1. Startup ideation tools

From helping you choose the best name for your startup and providing you with actionable advice from industry experts to helping you evolve your business idea to creating presentations. Idea generation tools are designed to help startups think more deeply, mind map, and brainstorm their ideas.

Some of the best startup ideation tools available today are:

• Mindmeister
• Germ.io
• Clarity
• Squad Help
• Javelin
• IdeasWatch

2. Website building tools

Your startup needs a website. For this, you can hire the expertise of a Denver website developer to design and create your website if you want the job done quickly and easily. Equally, if you have never built one before, a website building tool is what you need. A website builder can help you create a beautiful business website in quick time. Website building tools are affordable, easy to learn, and easy to use. You can drag and drop menus, choose from a wide variety of plugins and themes, customize, choose from several professional-looking templates, and change and update your website whenever you need to.

The best website builders today are:

• Wix – best overall website builder
• Squarespace – best value for all types of small eCommerce businesses
• Weebly – best for all types of brick-and-mortar shops
• GoDaddy – best for a fast setup
• WordPress – best for full control

3. Project management tools

A project management tool is especially useful when you have several projects going on simultaneously. The tool is designed to keep track of all your projects and goals. 

Project management tools follow a project through its lifecycle. All the team members have access to the platform and can add regular updates to each project so all the members can trace its progress from the beginning to the very end. Roles change in startups, and there is a need for transparency and real-time updates that these tools can provide.

Some effective project management tools are:

• Wrike – Best for project management and scheduling.
• Trello – Provides a clean, easy-to-use interface.
• Monday.com – A cloud-based platform best for planning, managing, and tracking projects.
• Asana – Ideal for project tracking and handy integrations.

4. Communication and collaboration tools

Communication and collaboration tools help your employees to keep in touch with each other no matter where they are. Projects are easily managed and teams can work together easily with these cloud-based tools – even when team members work from different locations.

Other communications and collaboration tools include:

• Zoom – Best for screen sharing, collaboration, and live virtual events.
• Slack – Great for team communication
• WebEx – Best for HD conferences, file-sharing capabilities, and personalized meeting rooms.
• GoToMeeting – Can be used for screen sharing, dial-in conferences, drawing tools, recording meetings, and web audio.
• Basecamp – An all-in-one collaboration and communications tool.

5. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools

Looking for a way to improve your relationships so you can improve and grow your business? A customer relationship management tool allows you to manage all your external interactions seamlessly. Add and store all your customer and prospective customer information, identify sales opportunities, manage your marketing campaigns, record service issues, and interact with your customers. 

With more visibility and completely easy access to data, you can collaborate easily and increase productivity.

Some of the best CRM tools are:

• Freshsales – can be used by businesses of all sizes
• Keap – a simple, and easy-to-use CRM
• Zoho CRM – one of the most sought after CRMs for small businesses and startups
• Less Annoying CRM – one of the best low-cost CRMs
• HubSpot CRM – a free CRM
• Salesforce – an all-in-one cloud-based CRM for growing businesses

6. Email marketing tools

Email marketing can provide your startup with a fantastic return on investment. An email marketing tool helps you capture email address through your website, host large mailing lists, create newsletters, and automate all your communications and track their results. You can create, test, optimize, and send all your email campaigns quickly and easily, and even personalize your emails to your customers and potential customers. All this can be done while saving you both time and money.

Some of the most well-known email marketing tools are:

• Mailchimp
• Moosend
• SendPulse
• Sender
• Omnisend

7.  Accounting software tools

There are several advantages to owning your own accounting software. The software works as your bookkeeper and accountant and helps you track all your expenses and profits, reconciles debts, sends invoices, creates expenses claims, reduces errors, saves time and staff costs. In short, the software processes all your startup’s financial transactions speedily. 

Conclusion

As well as all the above tools, consider getting business insurance for your startup. You can find more information here. You might not require all the tools mentioned here to run your startup successfully. Think about the type of business you run and analyse your needs. Research the various tools available in each category before honing in on a particular tool. Customize the tools to fit your needs and integrate everything you can. Get everyone on board to ensure the tools are used most favourably. 

Resources

Startup Nation. 2020. 13 Digital Tools Every New Business Needs. [ONLINE] Available at: https://startupnation.com/grow-your-business/digital-tools-new-business/. [Accessed 19 January 2021].

Business News Daily. 2021. 14 Collaboration Tools for Small Business. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6176-communication-tools.html. [Accessed 19 January 2021].

The Digital Project Manager. 2021. 10 Best Project Management Software for Startups. [ONLINE] Available at: https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/best-project-management-software-for-startups/. [Accessed 19 January 2021].

business.org. 2021. Best Website Builders for Small Businesses 2021. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.business.org/services/website/best-website-builder-for-business/. [Accessed 19 January 2021].

Feedough. 2021. The 10 Best Idea Generation & Validation Tools For Startups. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.feedough.com/startup-resources/idea-generation-validation-tools/. [Accessed 19 January 2021].

Cloudways. 2019. The 30 Best Startup Tools & Resources to Grow Your Business. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.cloudways.com/blog/best-startup-tools/. [Accessed 19 January 2021].

Business News Daily. 2021. Best CRM Software of 2021. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7839-best-crm-software.html. [Accessed 19 January 2021].