Running a company in this day and age can be extremely challenging. Not only do you have to keep up with the rapid evolution of technology, data and digital capabilities, but your customers are constantly evolving too. Customers expect on-demand services, rapid turnovers and real-time responses.
Not only has the evolution of customers had an impact on organizations, but a shift in employee expectation and thinking has forced companies to transform their operations. The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic globally has also forced businesses to rapidly pivot their operations and accelerate their adoption of digital technologies and cloud enablement.
With this in mind, we took a look at some of our favorite tools that will allow you as a company to enhance your performance. As the world evolves, so do the solutions, tools and platforms that allow you to solve current problems.
Website Management Plugins
Creating a website is one thing, but making it highly functional and user-friendly is another. Luckily, there are hundreds of thousands of useful tools and plugins that you can choose from and add to your site to increase the functionality of your site and the user experience. WordPress is fantastic for this kind of assistance and has a ton of different plugins that can improve the user experience and make your life easier.
A quick search for a great WordPress support plugin will yield a plethora of suggestions for useful helpdesk plugins. These not only provide support to your customers when they need help but make your life easier when managing ticketing and requests coming in through your website.
There are also fantastic SEO plugins that take you through the step-by-step process of checking your page’s SEO. Yoast is an absolute must as it guides you in getting the meta descriptions, slugs, headlines, paragraphs and H1 and H2 headings optimized for optimal SEO. It also guides you in your writing and keyword use on your page. So, whether you are writing a blog or creating a landing page, you can refer back to Yoast as a guideline for how well it will do on SEO.
There are also a number of eCommerce plugins to choose from. So, if selling goods or services online, and building your E-tailing business is your goal, plugins like WooCommerce are a great way of streamlining the full process. The plugin provides you with everything you need to get your products uploaded and in front of customers as efficiently as possible.
Automation Tools
A great rule of thumb for any modern company to run as efficiently as possible is to get a process right the first time and then automate it. Not only does this save you precious time and money, but it also reduces the number of errors that can arise while it is being carried out.
As with plugins, the number of automation tools online are endless. Social media, for example, has a number of automation tools that take the hard work out of managing various platforms. If you’re using LinkedIn, for example, you could look into finding a great LinkedIn automation service that would help you grow your networks, manage your messages and automate your lead generation.
The same can be said with your email platforms. These allow you to create templates, upload your databases, and distribute key content to your data en masse. You can reach hundreds of thousands of contacts with a click of the mouse, and then monitor the success rates of the emails. They also allow you to automatically resend emails to non-openers and track the open, click-through and bounce rates of each.
Process management and operations can also be effectively managed with the use of online tools, software and platforms. If you are running an eCommerce store, there are smart inventory and supply chain automation platforms that allow you to streamline and optimize everything from warehouse management to keeping tabs on inventory and shipping effectively and on time. These take hours out of your day, searching for products and keeping track of your stock.
Team And People Management
Remote work was greatly accelerated by COVID-19 and promoted even more need for online collaboration tools. Managers and business owners globally have stated that some of their biggest challenges during this time have been engaging with remote employees and battling with a lack of communication.
Online tools like Slack and Chanty have stepped in to try and assist with the problem. These are real-time communication tools where you can communicate directly with individual team members, whole teams, or even the company as a whole. You can create various channels and threads for various projects and even integrate them with your other platforms.
Trello or Monday.com work really well with these chat apps and are easily integrated. These are fast, useful platforms for projects and tasks to be allocated, managed and monitored throughout their entire lifespan. Not only will the team or individual allocated to the task have an overview of each task and its elements, but so will the rest of the team, managers and business owners.
Remote workers and freelancers can also be effectively managed through time-keeping and management tools like Toggl or Hubstaff. These kinds of tools allow individuals to digitally clock in and out and record the number of hours that they are working. Each recording can be defined as a task and reports can be sent regularly to team leaders or managers.
Wrapping Up
Many of the tools and platforms are incredibly affordable and can be used as a subscription service. The ROI on each of the platforms can be incredibly high, depending on how much you make use of the platform. Streamline as much as possible in your business and start focussing your energy on scaling your business through other channels.
