Starting a business has become easier than ever. But, with a number of startups mushrooming every day in the country, the competition is also fiercer than ever. In order to make the going a little bit easier for all these newbies, we have religiously sorted out these five essential tools that will help you stay ahead of the curve while still maintaining your budget.
1) Teamwork: Online Project Management Tool
With many startups nowadays operating virtually in the crucial initial years as a measure to save costs, an online project management tool becomes a necessity.
The initial few years of a startup are a test of its survival strength, therefore there’s a need that the the entire team is on the same page and is working effectively towards the same goal. Teamwork is an excellent tool to achieve just that. Using the tool, one can specify tasks to the right people and even set deadlines for them to complete the task.
Teamwork’s file-sharing feature transforms a virtual office into a real office as team members can collectively work together without any hassles. It’s other star features includes sub-tasks, statuses, attachments and milestones. As communication is the key to success, the tools also comes with a free Chat feature facilitating live and fast communication between each team member.
2) Hubspot: Marketing Automation Software
A startup needs to continuously keep scouting for new customers in order to keep the wheel running. An effective way to achieve this is by developing good lead generation channels. By using Hubspot, a startup will no longer have to resort to the hit and trial method for cracking the code for effective online marketing for your startup.
Focusing on inbound marketing strategies like SEO, social media and blogging etc., Hubspot’s Marketing Automation Software ensures that everything that a startup needs to generate new leads and close more sales is all under one single roof.
3) Timely: Time-Tracking Tool
For a startup, time is money, quite literally. In order to make sure that all the team members are doing their work diligently, a startup can make use of the time-tracking tool Timely. The tool allows startups to specify tasks to everyone and manage their workweek, all at one place.
The tool also comes with a tracking tool that allows the user to calculate the billable hours of each employee put into every task and ensure everyone is time-efficient.
4) Kissmetrics: Web Analytics
Studying your consumer base is a stepping stone for success. Web analytics tool, Kissmetrics helps you understand the behaviour of your consumers and the way they interact with your product/service. It hooks you up with all the right analytics needed for you to optimize your conversions. It’s key features like A/B test, funnel reports and cohort reports helps the startups to save crucial time by speeding up the optimization process.
5) iKeva – Virtual Office
Having a physical working space might be a little difficult on the pockets of newbies beginning to test the startup waters, but, one does need an official address and phone number to tackle all the client inquiries and business leads. This is where the Virtual Office tool comes to a startup’s rescue.
Virtual office service such as W1 Office in UK, Opus Virtual Office in US, and iKeva in India offers to handle all the business communications of their clients- from fax to live phone reception. Further, they also offer a physical meeting rooms for company and client meetings. Currently, iKeva is offering virtual office services, starting at Rs.2200, in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.
So, these were our top five picks. If you know some more and better tools, do let us know below in the comment box.
This article was originally published in indianweb2.com
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