8 Best Time-Saving Tools to Streamline Your Business Operations
Managing a start-up business can be overwhelming, especially if you’re doing it all. With this in mind, there are several resources and tools that you can utilize to keep your business running smoothly. Here, we rounded up 8 of Brand Glow Up‘s favourite business time-saving tools that will surely help you streamline & automate your business operations. These tools are not limited to project management and may cover other tasks so you won’t need to hire someone — for now at least. After all, the right tools can help you save time and effort whilst keeping the business efficient.
Tools to Streamline & Automate Your Business Operations
1. 17Hats
A platform dedicated to helping you with lead management, 17Hats doesn’t easily let opportunities pass. This helps collate leads and nurture these through different strategies automatically. No need to manually go through each because the platform will have specific triggers and scheduled actions to slowly but surely convert these leads. Furthermore, this tool can also help you send quotations, invoices, and contracts. You can even send automated reminders for payments and nudge important details needed for the project.
- website: https://www.17hats.com/
2. Canva
Canva is one of the most popular tools today in graphic design and editing. This business time-saving tool helps you to design materials from scratch using the platform’s rich features and ready-to-use elements. Flexible, this tool also allows you to go through ready-made templates. Also a community, you can even collaborate within the platform and leave comments or notes if necessary. Even without a background in Photoshop, this is definitely easy to use because of its drag-and-drop feature. Bonus: this also comes with a social media scheduling feature!
- website: https://www.canva.com/
3. Front
With the intent to keep everything organized but also together, Front does it better than anyone. This is designed best for improving and managing customer relations. Furthermore, how this tool works is it consolidates all communications which can allow you to see everything coming in for the business. You can then choose to filter and timely attend to each. Not limited to email, they also have several social media and messaging platforms supported. Tags and categories can event be added to easily assort the messages. This tool also offers analytics which you can use to check and recommend how to better the workflow.
- website: https://front.com/
4. Google Drive
Another lifesaver, Google Drive remains one of our favourite business time-saving tools. This cloud storage allows you to use up to 15 GB of storage for free but you can easily upgrade your plan without hurting your pocket. Besides this, Drive also allows you to use Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for document preparation. You can even share files with ease and simultaneously edit or collaborate on each. There is a comment feature as well that allows you to leave notes for reference.
- website: https://drive.google.com/
5. Grammarly
Grammarly is an AI-powered grammar checking tool. Installing this plug-in on your browser can help you easily correct minor grammar, spelling, or punctuation mistakes. This can help you get comfortable with writing emails, blog content, and more — without overthinking. Furthermore, this also has word suggestions, plagiarism checker, and sentence checker should you opt to go premium. You can even set the mood or theme to write more efficiently. Also, it can even be set to formal or casual depending on what you need.
- website: https://www.grammarly.com/
6. Homebase
A timekeeping and employee-management tool, Homebase aims to help start-up and small business owners. This business time-saving tool helps you with payroll, timekeeping, and scheduling. Moreover, this also tracks hourly work ensuring that your employees are productive and efficient. With this, you can now have more time to connect with your employees through the team chat. You can even automate the backend hiring and onboarding processes with a virtual employee file that you can access from anywhere.
- website: https://joinhomebase.com/
7. Calendly
Efficient for coaches and related businesses with free consultancies, Calendly allows your clients to book a schedule with you at your most convenient time. Maximizing this tool requires syncing your personal and work calendars so the platform can double-check your availability. No need to countercheck and eventually end up with conflicting schedules because this platform does it all for you automatically! You can add different events and set a designated timeslot. Notes can also be added so they can refer to them for any reminders.
- website: https://calendly.com/
8. Skype & Zoom
Skype has been a popular platform over the years and still continued to be essential for communication with the team and employees. However, it’s also great to acknowledge that Zoom also managed to be more preferred to date for virtual meetings with clients and collaborations with various partners. At the same time, you can event host webinars and various events with just Zoom. More than face-to-face meetings, Zoom proved to be efficient for its users because they can log in anywhere and anytime — no need to worry about anything else.
- website: https://www.skype.com/en/ and http://www.zoom.com/
