If you want to stay ahead of your competition, you need to keep up with technology. It seems that each year brings new tech tools that make business processes much more efficient. Why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of them? Well, you’ve probably already got your plate full if you’re managing a small business. Luckily, we’ve gathered 5 of the best tech tools that every modern business should be using. They’ll solve many problems that you didn’t even know you had!
1. Business password manager
This is a must-have tool to keep all of your important business passwords and other sensitive information safe and encrypted. Passwords can be tough to manage for individuals. For a business, this is even more difficult. To avoid the difficulty of creating and remembering many different passports, people often create very easy passwords or create one difficult one and repeat it across all of their accounts. Such password practices are no good for business security and can lead to horrible cyber attacks. A password manager will ensure that all passwords within your business are strong and available in a single location.
Many business password managers also have a password sharing feature, which allows people to safely share business passwords with other people. This eliminates the need to send them through email or write them down on a piece of paper.
2. Virtual private network
A virtual private network (VPN) is an encryption tool that can serve many different purposes in a business. It is a server that you can connect to and encrypt all of your device’s data and hide its location by using an alternative IP address. A virtual private network can be useful for:
- Security. Since a VPN encrypts all of your data, it can help protect business data from outsiders. For example, if someone from your company exposes their device to unencrypted networks but is using a VPN, their data is still encrypted and not as vulnerable to outsiders.
- Accessibility. A VPN can be connected to a specific IP, which can help employees connect to your office’s servers. This can help employees access data that is only available on company networks.
- Research. Since a VPN can change your IP address, you can take advantage of this when conducting research. For example, you can check your website’s ranking on Google for certain keywords in specific countries.
3. Social media management tools
Social media management can be a hectic process if you don’t have proper tools in place. For effective management and noticeable results, you need to ensure that your social media practices are consistent and organized. Even if you’re a small business with just Facebook and Instagram, managing those accounts can be difficult, especially since you probably have a lot of other things to worry about.
Social media management tools allow you to plan posts for the whole week in just one day and not worry about them until the next week. Hootsuite is one of the best social media management tools because you can manage several social media accounts from a single platform.
4. Email marketing tools
Just like with social media, email marketing requires consistency because that’s the only way to achieve long-term results. Your emails should also be visually appealing. Boring text emails without any images or fun layouts probably won’t get you and your business very far. By using an email marketing tool like Mailchimp, you can schedule your emails in advance and design more appealing emails, which will greatly up your email marketing game.
5. Project management tools
All businesses have many small projects that can be hard to keep track of. Your ability to handle these little projects really determines the success of your business. That’s why you need to keep everything as structured and easy to understand as possible. Using a project management tool like Trello, Asana, or Nifty makes this process much easier. These tools allow you to create projects, assign tasks to people, report progress, track finances, and stay ahead of your deadlines.
Conclusion
As technology advances, so should your business. There are so many tech tools that can make your everyday tasks so much easier. You need to keep yourself aware of the newest advancements and take advantage of as much technology as you can. Sure, you’ll probably need to pay a fee for many of these tools, but that price will more than pay off in the long term when you notice how much more secure and efficient your business has become!
