The Role of Digital Tools in Enhancing Business Efficiency

Representative Image (Image by courtesy: Freepik)
Representative Image (Image by courtesy: Freepik)

Introduction

As your business grows, the number of processes you need to control and manage increases as well. Just a few decades ago, to solve this problem, you would need to hire an army of assistants responsible for accounting, team management, and sending emails. Luckily, nowadays, the ​​IT industry offers a wide range of instruments that can easily perform the same tasks quicker, easier, and with better efficiency. To help you optimize all processes, we have made a list of the most popular digital tools for key business tasks and outlined their main functions and benefits. Read out and choose those that will make your enterprise flourish.

How Can Digital Tools Help Your Businesses?

Every business, no matter how small or big, consists of endless processes that should be managed timely and effectively. If one of the elements malfunctions, the whole system starts breaking apart. For instance, if a manager fails to set tasks for several team members, the whole project won’t be finished on time, which, in its turn, will trigger financial and reputational losses for the whole company. Modern digital tools prevent such situations by performing the majority of routine tasks and, in such a way, giving managers and team members more time to focus on what is really important.

Below is a list of the most effective tools that would allow you to forget about hundreds of small daily tasks and turn the whole team into a one smoothly running machine that drives towards one goal — the success of your business.

Communication & collaboration

  • Slack is a messaging app that allows coworkers and invited users to exchange text messages, send media files, and call each other. Employees can communicate one-on-one or create channels that several or all team members can access. This app is perfect for teams working asynchronously from different locations and time zones. Every employee can see the working hours of their colleagues and schedule messages that would be delivered accordingly.
  • Notion is a digital working space where you can collaborate on creating and editing content, comment, and share it with team members and clients. The tool offers a developed system of commenting files and topics, where each team member can not only leave their remarks but also pin them, leave reactions, and add links.
  • Blink is an application that connects employees within an organization. It allows them to create chats and thematic spaces, share news, inform the team about each member’s achievements, and leave feedback for managers via surveys and digital forms.

Document drafting

  • Lawrina is a legal tech platform that provides templates for contracts, agreements, letters, and other types of documents drafted by professional lawyers. To create online documents, as business purchase agreement, users just have to choose corresponding templates, answer a few simple questions, review the drafts, and download PDF files.
  • Clio is a cloud-based software that allows lawyers to manage all of a company’s legal matters online. Via this app, they can contact clients, store documents, and navigate legal cases.

Video conferences

  • Zoom is an online platform through which coworkers connect via video or audio and chat. Employees can use either a desktop version or a mobile app to join video meetings, webinars, and conferences or have one-on-one calls.
  • GoogleMeet is an online video chat integrated as a part of the GoogleWorkspace platform that allows users to organize and schedule online meetings or video calls. The key benefits of the tool are that all your calls are automatically added to Google Calendar, which sends you timely notifications, and simple navigation.
  • Microsoft Teams is a video conferencing app that allows teams to communicate in real-time. One can join a meeting with or without showing their video, share one’s screen, and add comments in a chat.

Digital publishing:

  • Flipsnack is a multifunctional application ​​allowing users to create digital publications in the browser and ​​add interactive elements, such as video, audio, and links. The tool is very user-friendly, which means even users with no experience can easily create a magazine or an online brochure. One can either create customized products or use templates offered by the app.
  • Strapi is a content management platform that offers content creators a variety of instruments to create, publish, and edit digital content. You can create articles for your blog, choose the structure you want, and add videos, links, and images.

Project management

  • Trello is an easy-to-use application for managers to outline projects, set new tasks, and track the general workflow. Use boards, cards, and lists to give each team member a perfect understanding of the project as a whole and their role in it.
  • Jira is a multifunctional project management tool for teams of all sizes that allows them to plan, set, and track working tasks. The project is presented in the form of a strict structure that includes bigger and smaller tasks for each of the departments involved. Managers can set deadlines, track the time spent on this or that task, and give feedback on the work that is finished.

Social media management

  • Buffer is social media software perfect for small business projects. With its help, one can post content, schedule publications, analyze the involvement of the audience, and get recommendations for the improvement of the company’s media performance.
  • Hootsuite is an AI-based tool that performs the function of a social media manager: it plans, schedules, and creates content to promote your business online. The app is available in 6 languages, which means it can reach audiences worldwide and is comfortable for use in international teams.

Email marketing

  • Mailchimp platform helps businesses to create effective email campaigns and attract more customers. It offers such tools as email templates, automated email flows, and personalized content to engage your audience and drive conversions.
  • Drip is an online tool for email automation for small businesses and huge corporations. With its help, one can create complex chains of emails for different audiences, and the system will deliver them automatically within the set deadlines.

Conclusion

Running a business in a digital era is simultaneously easy and hard. On the one hand, one has a variety of tools that can perform minor tasks automatically or at least much quicker than humans. It would take a marketing manager a few days to create emails for every potential audience, but special apps can do it in a few hours. On the other hand, each of the programs aimed at helping businesses requires time and dedication, as one needs to know how to use it. Nevertheless, once the tricky path of studies is over, get ready to enjoy how smooth, stress-free, and effective the workflow has become and how your business grows.

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