Running any business is not easy, but it gets even hard when it is a small company with limited resources! You tend to struggle through to keep the costs down; and this is when you tend to rely on inexpensive/free online tools that can help you manage your business costs more effective. I’ve listed out 10 best online tools for small businesses, these tools have helped us at Cinergix Pty Ltd mange a growing business and team that spread across numerous locations and thought I should share them with you! Zoho People
Zoho People helps you maintain all your Human Resource Information System (HRIS) data in one place instead of having multiple spreadsheets or databases. The pre-built HRIS forms helps your HR handle administrative tasks easily and enables you to focus on resolving people related issues. This is an online people management and recruitment solution. Processing payrolls, generating reports and conducting appraisal all becomes easy for your HR and it offers great benefits to the staff. CurdBee
CurdBee is a safe and secure web-based billing and invoicing application. It’s used by business owners to send invoices to their clients and then collect payments via PayPal or Google Checkout, all with just a few clicks of your mouse. Once an invoice has been created, you can track all payments via CurdBee without having to go from your PayPal account to your Google account and back to check payments. Creately 
Creately is a web-based collaborative diagramming software that comes with built-in tools for easy and secure collaboration. With an extensive library of shape sets and quick start templates Creately supports many diagram types. You can now communicate visually with your distributed teams, invite them to review and update your diagrams, thus improve Project turnaround times. Creately is now added to the Google Apps as an online diagramming editor; and it is ready to serve millions of small businesses around the world. Manymoon
Manymoon is an online project collaboration tool with an easy to use web interface. This allows users to create projects, assign tasks and track progress. Members of a project can easily update others about what they’re working on, and also track the progress of other members assigned to the project. Many moon works with Google Apps and is a great tool for small businesses. Zendesk
Zendesk provides a customer support portal solution based on the latest Web 2.0 technology. This provides seamless integration of the back-end helpdesk SaaS to a company’s online customer-facing web presence, including hosted support email-ticket integration, online forums, RSS and widgets. This is the best part of Zendesk, because most SaaS helpdesk solutions focus exclusively on the backend helpdesk and treat the Web as an afterthought. Yammer 
Yammer is a real-time communication platform for companies, groups and organizations. Unlike Twitter, Yammer focuses on businesses; individuals with the same email domain can join a given network to start communicating. The purpose of Yammer is to allow co-workers to share status updates – you can now post updates on what you’re working on, post news, links, ask questions, and get answers from your co-workers. SEOmoz 
SEOmoz provides companies and individuals around the world with online tools and tutorials to help with their Internet marketing and search engine optimization needs. They aim at providing an exceptional software and education to businesses, individuals, and other organizations so they can best leverage the unique reach of the Internet to increase visibility and achieve success. Skype
Skype is software that enables the world’s conversations. Millions of businesses worldwide use Skype to communicate with their globally distributed clients and co-workers. They can make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. The service also allows Skype users to call mobiles and landlines, and vice-versa. UserVoice
UserVoice is an online customer feedback system where your users can make suggestions or give feedback. UserVoice makes it easy for users of your product to suggest and vote on new features as well as report bugs via a tab that is inserted on to your website, which links to a support forum. UserVoice bridges the gap between the customers and the business owners by responding to customers’ feedback and ideas, and by letting them know that you care about them. StartPR 
StartPR is a web-based social media monitoring service. StratPR searches through a number of different sources, such as Twitter, Google’s Blog Search, Technorati, and many more to find the possible mentions of your company. This is a great application for small businesses because it allows you to track who is talking about your company or your product/ service, what they’re saying, and helps you to also manage the conversation.
I’d love for you to exchange ideas on the tools you use. If anything of the above is new to you, don’t fail to give it a try; and let me know how you find it useful. I surely did miss out on many other tools for small businesses, please leave a comment on the ones you think should have been here!
Comments
2 responses to “Top 10 online tools for Small Businesses”