Six Software Solutions Your Business isn't Taking Advantage of

You want your business to be successful and stay on track. It’s easy to make goals and have overarching ambitions, but even still you might be missing out on some simple ideas for how to make your systems and processes a lot easier. Technology is a standard in making your business better, and these new software programs are just a few that you might not be using to capacity.

Help Desk
Some of the best bang-for-your-buck software solutions are Help Desk programs. You can use them to give an impressive level of customer service and responsiveness without having to hire more employees. The first benefit is that your customers will hear consistent explanations of what is being done to resolve their issue with no more complaints that get a different answer every time. Your business will come across as being sincere and authentic in handling customer problems. Every customer problem can become an opportunity for you to impress and generate positive word of mouth. When choosing a help desk program, two important aspects you should focus on are ticket management and a knowledge base capability. Proper ticket management makes sure no problem slips between the cracks, and the knowledge base speeds response time because agents can quickly see the best way to resolve an issue.

Programs like Jira Service Desk allow your customers to send an email to a designated email address and will automatically convert the email to a ticket. ServiceDesk Plus (SDP) and Revelation are strong on knowledge base development and can offer your customers searchable databases that can help cut down on calls to customer service.

Browser Add-Ons
This next solution might be totally unexpected, but most business owners will be pleasantly surprised to find out how many business and productivity apps are available to be embedded in Google Chrome. All of the major browsers have add-on programs that give them additional functionality, but the Chrome sphere has the widest and most comprehensive selection. Because these apps are written for Chrome, the same program interface will be on your PC, laptop, tablet, and phone if you run the Chrome operating system on all your devices. This is a simple solution that is free and easy to implement.

Voice
Why should your car and phone be the only devices you talk to? There are very good dictation and voice recognition programs that allow you to be productive on your computer without using a mouse or keyboard. Dictation programs such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, Voice Finger, Via Talk, Speechnotes, and many others offer a wealth of features and capabilities. You can compose documents, make notes while you’re reading professional literature, do medical transcription, search the web, open and close programs, and navigate through programs and folders on your computer using only voice commands. This means you can streamline a lot of your long writing processes and get daily tasks taken care of a lot more quickly.

Human Resources
A great HR program can make your onboarding of new employees more thorough. Benefit management, tracking independent contractors, attendance, leave and payroll functions can all be real headaches if they get to be too much for your department. Stay on top with programs such as BambooHR, Zenefits, and sumHR. As you grow your business and add staff, careful HR management can help make sure your labor expenses don’t unnecessarily weigh down your profits.

Social Media
Social Media apps are becoming more and more important in reaching your customers and understanding what’s working, and what’s not working with your product or service. A lot of your customers expect you to have an app for your business that they can fire up to do business with you. A good business app is also a marketing tool. You should have an app in the Apple store, the Android store, and have them downloadable from your web site. You can pay a programmer to write one for you, but now there are programs you can use to do it yourself. Programs such as GoodBarber and AppyPie can be used by non-programmers as they are fairly easy to use and produce a decent app.

Accounting
Your accounting software can be used to help you get a better picture of where your business stands now and in the future. There are many accounting programs out there, but for small and medium businesses Quickbooks is the dominant program. There are usually features in all accounting programs that do more than create balance sheets and profit and loss statements. Take advantage of features such as inventory, downloading transactions from your bank directly into the program, automating paying bills and sending out invoices, and generating payroll checks and tax forms.

Don’t let your business lag behind, use these above software solutions to your advantage and get a head start with your company.