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Monday 10 October 2011

Software Tools Which Every Business Owner Should Know

Tools and web services form an indispensable part of the website’s existence. They help to create and store documents. Mentioned below are the top 10 business software tools and web services that can effectively help in boosting a small and medium sized business. By utilizing some of these tools, a business can make the most in terms if functionality, performance and ROI. http://www.fritidsjobbet.mono.net/upl/9301/Grafstigning0.jpg

1. Accounting Software

Invoicera is an online billing and invoicing app which can be a very useful tool for any business when it comes to financial management. Invoicera provides you with much essential business and invoicing related features such as time and expense tracking, invoice scheduling, recurring with auto-billing capabilities and soon Invoicera is going to launch its android app with which you can invoice your clients and track your time and expenses while on the fly. It takes only a few clicks to do things like cutting a check to bill a client.

2. Blogging tool

In today’s time, a business can maximize its profit with the help of a blog. WordPress is an effective blogging tool that can be used to update company and product news. WordPress can be installed easily within no time. It is quite easy to use and contribute in helping a business. It is available without any cost.

3. Collaboration/Office Suite

Google Docs is a wonderful collaboration tool with the help of which you can share files simultaneously and collaborate on them in real time. It is a free service that offers a word processor and a spreadsheet. You can also upgrade to the premium edition that brings extra space with it and also a conference-room scheduling system

4. CRM

You should remember that customer relationship management is an important aspect of online business and deserves required attention. With the help of effective customer relationship management even a single person shop can benefit by managing the sales process, tracking leads, and ensuring that follow-ups are done in time. Salesforce.com is a good service. It offers a large number of features and is reasonably priced. You just need some training and patience to get a hang of it.

5. Backup and Recovery

It is imperative to back up files on a regular basis to an external hard drive. It ensures that if in any unfortunate incident, you lose all the data, you always have the back up to bank on. Mozy is an online backup service that automatically archives whatever you find safe enough across the internet. You just need to select what all you want to be backed up and rest will be done by Mozy. It is available at a reasonable price.

6. E-Commerce Service

Yahoo Small Business is a tool that offers things like templates and wizards to credit-card processing and sales-tax collection. In fact, it is available at a very reasonable price.

7. Collaboration

Vyew is a tool with the help of which anyone can host an Internet session that lets scattered colleagues work together on a project in real time. It is a web conferencing platform that provides you a simple whiteboard where you can upload documents for discussion or can create fresh designs.

8. Calendar

Sunbird is a well-known calendar tool on which most of the businesses rely heavily for scheduling. It is a simple application which has  day, week, and month views. It also has a publishing feature to enable sending your calendar to a Web site, should you wish to make it public. You can integrate Sunbird directly with Thunderbird Get the Lightning plug-in to integrate Sunbird directly with the help of lightning plug-in. This is a free tool.

9. Database

Although Microsoft Office provides the Access feature in many of its editions, but it is always better to have a database program with you. FileMaker Pro is a good database tool that is more intuitive than Access. It also offers high end features like live SQL data source support and easy Web-publishing capabilities. This lets you and your staff to access the database via a browser. It even has a set of pre-built templates that help you get up and running in no time.

10. E-mail

Features offered by Thunderbird can help you save money and offers most of Outlook’s features. This is a free tool and lets you do message tagging. It also has an integrated search system.
Yahoo Zimbra Desktop is another free tool. It is an offline version of Zimbra’s capable Web-based e-mail manager. It has everything that a small business may need- a contact manager, an impressive calendar, a to-do list, and a document manager for taking notes.