When you started your business, you're likely to have had ideals in mind: financial goals, lifestyle goals. You’ve probably noticed that small things often get in the way - and before you know it, your goals can seem pretty distant.
Get the small tasks under control so that you have the freedom to focus on the big issues. And do this by implementing processes and systems that make your business more efficient and better managed.
In this blog post, we share a list of ten free tools to help you get the small things out of the way.
Drive business efficiency with these ten free tools
Wrike
Project management
Wrike helps you manage your projects: keep track of time, manage resources and tasks, and facilitate team collaboration. It offers cloud storage integration and mobile apps, so you never have to do without. It’ll empower your team by improving organisation and efficiency.
Tableau Public
Data visualisation
With Tableau Public you can create, store and save interactive data visualisations. You can then share your visualisations over social media, or embed them into a site or blog. This is a great way to engage with your audience, because you’re offering information in a way that really seizes attention.
Document scanning
It’s surprising how bits of paper accumulate. With Evernote Scannable, you can scan notes and papers and organise them. The app also offers note enhancements like links, tables and audio. Increase productivity for the team by using this app to keep track of it all.
Visual / creative thinking
Inkflow is a tool for artists, visual thinkers and creative projects. You can capture ideas just as you would with pen and paper – with or without a stylus – then arrange, reorganise, even zoom. Whether you use words or pictures, it’s a great business tool for brainstorming, making diagrams and jotting down ideas.
Notetaking
Take better notes with Evernote. This app syncs between devices and across operating systems, so you never have to go without. Whether you need to organise yourself with to-do lists, attach photos or files to notes, or track your time, Evernote helps you increase productivity.
Email assistant
Astro combines email, calendar and artificial intelligence to help you sort out your inbox. Astrobot, your AI assistant, will prompt you with reminders and prioritise your emails. Astrobot responds to both voice and text commands, saving you time and ensuring the important things get your attention.
Smart reminder app
A to-do list and task manager, Taskful can turn goals into tasks, which you can organise by colour and repeat as necessary. Taskful can help your business by breaking goals into smaller steps and motivating you to stay on track to meet your deadlines.
Social media management
With Buffer, use a single dashboard to control all your social media accounts. Schedule posts and they’ll be published automatically. Use this app to focus your social media efforts, whether that means ensuring consistency across your social media apps, making regular updates or reducing distractions.
Data extraction
Use Scraper to extract data from web pages into Microsoft Excel. You can scape table data, images, even automate the process or fill forms. This is great tool for making comparisons and minimising the manual work required.
Designs and documents
Canva is a graphic-design tool. The stunning graphics, photographs and fonts provided are drag-and-drop simple. Whether you have a presentation to prepare, documents to create or event and marketing materials to design, there are layouts ready. Your creations can be produced in print, too, making Canva a great publicity tool.
Conclusion
The ten tools above show you how to increase business efficiency by simplifying. Each tool can benefit a specific area of your business. More importantly, any of these will help you to get the small tasks out of the way so that you can focus on the big tasks – in the business and outside it.
Get the right tools and systems in place early and you’ll be set for future success.
