It’s no secret that running a successful small business in the current business world is no walk in the park. Entrepreneurs must stay on top of many tasks, ranging from customer support to market research, to obtain a competitive advantage and achieve their company’s goals.

Thankfully, your start-up can depend on the right tools as a great way to operate more effectively, easing the burden of small business management. Below are six essential tools that your growing company needs to function efficiently nowadays.

1. Call Center Tools

Organizations of all sizes have to offer excellent customer support in today’s competitive marketplace. Thankfully, customer engagement is more convenient because enterprises can interact with clients through various communication channels. Phone calls remain popular, so you can invest in a responsive call center to handle customer calls. However, finding the right call center tools is necessary to guarantee an effective call center system. Leading companies such as Bright Pattern will come in handy when seeking your customer service teams’ best contact center solution.

Bright Pattern’s cloud contact center solution is one of the best call center software specifically designed to allow businesses to decentralize their call center operations. This virtual call center solution allows your live agents to connect with clients across multiple communication channels like social media, SMS, voice calls, and live chat. Thanks to this call center software, you can maintain context and relevance across these platforms, guaranteeing a seamless customer experience. This contact center software allows for CRM integrations with platforms like Zendesk and has key features like screen-pop functionality, Artificial Intelligence capabilities, autodialer, an outbound call center, and is VOIP enabled. What’s more, it’s a cloud solution, is fully customizable, and offers comprehensive data security.

2. Inventory and Asset Management Tools

Your enterprise undoubtedly relies on equipment and inventory to function effectively. As such, you need an effective inventory management system to help you stay on top of supply ordering, surplus handling, products in stock, among others. Additionally, an asset management software solution is necessary since your company has several devices and tools vital to its operational efficiency. Therefore, finding the right software to manage your business tools is crucial to avoid missing equipment and downtime. Trusted digital asset management systems can handle these concerns.

CHEQROOM is a digital asset management software that offers companies real-time insights over all of their critical assets. CEOs rely on this brand asset management software to ensure that any tools in their organization’s equipment room are accounted for, avoiding missing equipment and employee mishandling. You can track your equipment by scanning them with barcodes and QR codes using this digital asset tracking solution, so you can know which employee is using what equipment and when it’s due back. What’s more, this software solution is better than a spreadsheet because you can optimize your assets’ performance through maintenance scheduling, all from the convenience of a mobile app.

3. CRM Software

Many business experts agree that loyal customers are essential to successful entrepreneurship nowadays. Consequently, rely on CRM software to better manage your customer relationships and boost customer loyalty in various ways. These tools allow you to stay on top of customer service and provide you with actionable insights that shape your decision-making for the best customer experience outcomes. As a business leader, you can also rely on survey tools to monitor customer behavior and obtain feedback. Trusted survey solutions providers such as Alchemer can help with this need.

Alchemer is one of the best software providers that equips businesses of all sizes to build strong Voice-of-the-customer programs that influence decision-making across all facets of their enterprise. Their VOC tools help you ask clients the right questions at the right time. Consequently, you can obtain vital customer feedback to help your company be more responsive to customer demands and expectations. Their VOC solution collects this feedback at various touchpoints throughout the customer journey. This way, you have complete control over feedback management since clients can channel their negative customer reviews to you directly instead of spreading them on social media and review sites. Furthermore, this Voice-of-the-customer tool integrates with your everyday systems like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics, allowing you to address customer issues based on your VOC data to boost customer retention.

4. Brand Management Software

You can use brand management software to execute effective marketing campaigns for your brand. Brand management software allows you to create new marketing campaigns and approve them using brand management tools. Additionally, you can create multi-format content in HTML, PDF, among others, based on your needs through this software. You can also use a brand management platform to create marketing content that’s consistently in line with your brand identity. Reputable software providers such as Chili Publish can help you find the best brand management solution.

Chili Publish develops technology that automates and simplifies graphic processes. Brand managers can maintain fundamental brand guidelines using their brand portal software to maintain uniformity consistent with their company’s identity and brand strategy. This brand portal platform protects your branding through templatization, ensuring that designs for brochures, flyers, and ads are already uploaded and ready for adjustments when necessary. Furthermore, everyone in your team can use this online brand portal, and no additional software or plugins are required to get started.

5. Project Management Solutions

Project management solutions are essential to your company’s operations because they efficiently organize complex tasks. These tools achieve this by breaking large projects into specific task segments while allowing an overall view of the bigger picture. This way, you can reduce big projects into smaller and easier-to-understand components while effectively tracking where, why, and how your resources are being used to complete tasks. As a business leader, you can also consider obtaining your MBA to improve your capacity. Acclaimed educational institutions such as the University of Cincinnati will come in handy when seeking the best way to acquire your master’s degree.

The University of Cincinnati Online offers top-notch online academic programs from the leading research and higher learning institution in Cincinnati, Ohio. This American University gives you the chance to obtain your master’s degree in business administration through an online MBA program. You can customize your MBA program by specializing in various courses, including healthcare administration and marketing. Graduate students in this master’s program gain decision-making and strategic leadership skills, besides core skills in finance, Information Technology, business analytics, operations management, among others. As an MBA graduate, you can easily switch career fields and enter into management roles over candidates with an undergraduate degree.

6. Time Tracking Software

Time tracking software allows you to effectively manage time through detailed documentation of performance on varying tasks. This way, you can understand how your workers spend their time, identifying areas where you focus too little or too much. Therefore, you can quickly improve employee productivity and time usage to make your enterprise more efficient. Understanding employee engagement and motivation can also help you get the best out of your workers. Helpful platforms such as Ambassify can offer great insights into the dynamics of employee motivation.

Ambassify is an employee management SaaS platform that helps customers better manage their workers, build their brands, and achieve tangible business results. The Ambassify blog also provides insightful articles on various employee and customer-themed topics. Their piece on employee motivation helps entrepreneurs understand the motivating factors behind people’s behavior within the organization. Team members work best when spurred by intrinsic motivation compared to extrinsic rewards. As such, you can adopt strategies like recognizing excellent work and avoiding micromanaging to improve job satisfaction among your old and new employees alike.

Modern businesses can rely on several tools to help them operate more effectively. The points above are six examples of these tools you should consider adopting to streamline your operations.