There is a lot that goes into creating and running a business. It can sometimes feel like you need 20 arms and three heads to do everything required to keep yourself afloat, but it doesn’t have to be like that. Sure, running a business takes a lot of work, but in the digital world, there are a lot of aspects that can be automated, saving you time, money, and in some cases, a new hire.
With these online tools, you can take a lot of the little aspects of running a business out of your hands. Take a look to see if they could improve your workday.
Employee benefits
Handling your employee’s benefits can be a tedious task that needs to be done. Benefits instil loyalty in your company and can sometimes be vital to life. Perks like dental and health benefits will keep your employees loyal to you and your company and promote productivity. At the same time, the occasional bonus can reward a successful project well done.
But if you have a few employees or see a lot of the ins and outs in terms of hires, keeping track of what everyone is due can be difficult.
There are apps out there that let you automate the whole process without removing control. For example, Zest allows you to track every individual employee’s benefits, letting you change them as you wish and making sure everyone gets what they’re owed.
You can assign bonuses when you want to and remove benefits if someone leaves the company.
Packaging
If you are selling products, especially if your business has an element of online retail, no doubt you have your shipping handled since you won’t expect to trek across the country to personally deliver a product. But what about the packaging?
It is an often-forgotten element of running a business that needs addressing eventually. You can’t hand over your fresh toffee popcorn into the hands of a UPS employee, after all.
Services like Blueprint Automation allow you to maintain creative control of the packaging process without the hands-on work of getting your products ready to ship.
The process is a simple one, allowing you to create the graphics of your package and apply them to one of a dozen packaging options. You’ve got everything from milk cartons with their screw of lids to clipped bags, rip of bags, and even pizza trays to choose from. Once that’s done, you get to choose your shipping options, like whether you want your products in a crate or a cardboard box, etc., and how you would like them laid out.
A sudden boost in customers can make packaging feel overwhelming quickly, so instead of gaining papercuts on top of papercuts, you can outsource the work to Blueprint Automation and focus on making your product the best it can be.
Project management
As mentioned above, many spinning plates are going when running a business, and in a way, having a team of employees can feel like even more plates to spin. They need to be informed on what they are doing next, and big projects will need to have elements spread between them all.
Project management software like Trello can let you distribute everyday tasks amongst your employees and allow you to plan, getting more work done. Your productivity will go through the roof if your employees know what they are doing and just get started.
You can also ensure that everyone is doing the same amount of work, splitting tasks evenly across your employees.
If you have a big project coming up, you can split it into smaller elements and assign tasks to your employees, eliminating the need for a weekly meeting on progress. You can track the progress of your project and be sure that your employees are working to their full potential.
Marketing
Business and marketing go hand in hand. There is no business without marketing, and business – and digital marketing has revolutionized the game. Digital marketing is easier, cheaper, and more effective, but an aspect often gets forgotten that makes digital marketing so good: the data.
The creative aspect is often seen as almost fun, creating content for social media, etc., but the data drives sales. You can determine where the customers are coming from, what they have engaged with, and what convinced them into a sale with the customer data.
But understanding this data isn’t easy. Luckily there are a lot of online tools that can help you out there. Tools can gather all the data across your sites and social media, and your affiliate links and present all the information in a simple report. Others can schedule and automate content posting to social media, and others will keep track of your affiliate partnerships and report on which are the most successful.
