4 Money Saving Biz Tools Help You Do More With Less Effort

There are a couple of business tools most of us need to keep the ship afloat and moving forward.

One very good support is some type of collaboration software, to keep people working on a project on the same page. Generally speaking, what this type of software will help you do is develop a mutually agreeable time line , track milestones, and keep a record of what you’ve accomplished. Not to mention those handy little alerts that arrive in your inbox to tell you a deadline is coming up, or, more ominously…. but also helpful… that you’ve missed a deadline

The web based software I’ve been using is Central Desktop – Project collaboration, Team collaboration, Intranets, Wiki Software which, personally, I find very helpful.  You might want to check it out.  I think it costs about $25  a month but can go up from there with additional services.

For document storage and collaboration, I also use Google Docs, which I find extremey usefulfor light collaboration.

Since I’m overseeing a lot of projects at once….as you probably are, too… I like these kind of tools that give me kind of an overview.

Telephone & Communications System

I want to mention to you, also  the benefits of getting a phone system that doesn’t just answer the phone, but also shortens and manages a lot of the work for you. The service I use is Onebox.com.  My plan is about $50 a month for 4 extensions, with 800#s.  ( which 1 person can handle if desired or others can have their own extension.  There is also a 10 extension plan & other plans, as well. ) It’s like a virtual PBX with a professional, automated receptionist answering with the extensions ( call mine at (888) 810-4445 to see how it works).  The beauty of it is you can either be hands off, with all messages being delivered to your email, as well as on  the system, including voice messages which you click and hear live. Or you can be hands on, with a feature called “Find me, follow me”,  where you give the system your various locale phone numbers, and general schedule, if you want, and the system tracks you down while your caller is on hold.  With this, you also get electronic fax and phone conferencing — I think it’s up to 99 people.  It has other features, as well. There are many benefits besides screening your calls, and allowing you to plan your day with miniimum interruptions: greatly increased communication between your clients, team members and you in addition to  increased ease of handling for you and expanded functionality. You might want to check it out.  It raises your professional image, I think.

Ryan in 10 Money Saving Tools For Small Business | Business Pundit describes several tools, two of which. no matter what software solution you select, I think, are essential to have in your small business tool belt. The third is a CRM , customer relation management, a product  I really haven’t gotten into yet, but I can see the handwriting on the wall, so will certainly take a look at this one.  If for nothing else, I’m sure the following two features would be helpful to most of us:

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Contact and Lead Tracking

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Sales and Pipeline Mangement

Here are the three Ryan recommends.

OpenProj – Ultimate Free Project Control

http://openproj.org/

Keeping track of all the different aspects of a project can be a real pain, especially since most of us are not natural born Gantt wizards. That’s why efficient project management for free, as provided by OpenProj, is a real blessing for businesses. OpenProj is an open source desktop application that aims to simplify the complexities of project management – scheduling, tasking, estimating, multi-dependencies coordinating, analyzing, resource assigning and all those depressing processes.

The interface is neat, simple to understand but still maintains a high level of professionalism. It’s one of those cases where “Intuitive” does not mean “For Dummies”. You can run Microsoft files, Primavera files and other external Gannt files with OpenProj, which is a great advantage because it allows you to easily integrate previous projects with it.

And on a personal note, I always support initiatives that battle Microsoft’s greedy ways. OpenProj is one of these brave initiatives, offering a quality free alternative to Microsoft Project (now available for only $599.99!!). Choosing OpenProj over Microsoft is by no means a compromise.You get a great product for free and keep $600. It’s just common sense.

DocStoc – Documents Heaven

http://docstoc.com/

Everyone has an online community these days, even documents. Meet DocStoc. This site successfully provides two time saving services for the cost of nothing. One is managing and organizing your documents. After uploading them, you can store your documents, create an embed code for them, share them with other people and keep track of who’s viewing them. It’s an excellent solution for messy desktops and crowded folders.

The other thing DocStoc offers is an immense variety of much needed documents concerning legal issues, business and financial matters, technology assistance, educational affairs and even showbiz. You can easily browse or search the huge pool of docs, available in more than 50 different languages. The documents are ranked according to different parameters (rates, views, downloads), and users can also write their own review about them. You can also browse the “Docsters”, meaning, the people behind the documents. This doubles as a good networking opportunity, as you can easily come across people with similar professional profiles as yours, or in industries you are seeking to connect with.

Free CRM – Smiling Customers

http://www.freecrm.com/

Businesses have customers and customers require Customer Relationship Management. Free CRM (the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think) is a web-based CRM tool that provides a very clever method of tracking, organizing and analyzing your relations with the clientele.

As online contact with customers intensifies, the demand for more advanced CRM softwares grows accordingly. Free CRM deals with this demand quite well, delivering features such as email-campaigns regulation, contact lists management, multi-sources synchronization, simplification of the support system and many other professional CRM solutions. Compared to other free CRM products, Free CRM simply offers more no-cost services (a major plus is the Unlimited Users option, which other CRM tools charge for). Like any other company in this field, they also offer additional services for money, but from what I’ve seen their Professional Edition, sold for $14.95 per month, is substantially cheaper than other paid services.

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