Being a startup owner certainly has its high points, but at times can be overwhelming and challenging. Even when things are going well, our eyes are always veering towards that dollar sign and analyzing how we can make it climb just a little bit higher. Thankfully, we live in an age where technology practically begs us to help ourselves, by providing numerous tools to help us ensure our companies run as efficiently as possible and help us maximize our potential earnings.
Build Your Website
An obvious yet expensive necessity of a startup is creating its website, a job which can cost thousands of dollars when hiring a developer. Luckily, there are now a myriad of DIY website builders available for the layperson to utilize, regardless of having a previous coding background or not. Platforms like Wix and Weebly are great if you want to get a standard website up and running quickly, providing users with scores of website templates and basic editing tools.
There's also a relatively new addition to the website building market, Simbla, which has changed the game in that it combines a UI/UX environment with an online database equipped with ready-made, data-driven applications. Users with some basic JavaScript knowledge can also create their own web applications that then integrate with their website and online database, or combine "database widgets" to achieve a similar effect.
There aren't many bad choices here as far as variety goes; irrespective of which one you choose, these website builders will save you time, money, and lots of effort.
Log Your Data
Big Data is the bread and butter of a startup's infrastructure, if only we'd know how to properly harness it. This data is effectively the vast amount of structured and unstructured information that overloads a startup every day and can have a positive impact, including things like machine to machine data, social network interaction analysis, and transaction logs. Because there is so much data to sift through, it can be difficult to elicit the information that is crucial to a startup's decision making processes which translates into money-making opportunities.
To clarify, it's not the large amount of data that's important, rather what you do with it. Coralogix is a log analytics platform that turns huge data logs into approachable and meaningful patterns and flows, in order to help companies get a handle on their data. By grouping your data into analyzable patterns, it turns this information into small data you can work with, and allows you to identify errors like production problems.
Not only are these insights crucial to your startup's survival and growth, but the service itself also stands in as a much cheaper option for the complex data-analyzing technologies that businesses used to need but couldn't afford.
Track and Execute Your Startup's Processes
Having one unified platform to track and execute your startup's processes is helpful both to start-ups and enterprises alike. For example, platforms like Progressly, which are centralized for all of your company's processes, can be integrated into your pre-existing operations.
It defines and standardizes your company's processes, providing data to optimize the processes and daily insights into how your team is performing, so you can frequently check in on what kind of ship you're running and whether or not you should tighten your grip on the helm. The various tools these platforms give you result in fostering team unification and quicker decision making about what your next strategy should be to make your startup yield higher profits.
Use CRM
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is one of the most necessary tools a startup should implement. Studies show that companies can see a 29% increase in sales with a fully utilized CRM system. There are dozens of useful CRMs available, one of which is Salesforce, a cloud-based CRM that is notable for being easy to use and serving the needs of all companies, regardless of size.
Providing customers with features like contact and opportunity management, lead generation, drag and drop reporting tools, automated workflow for sales reps, and more, this CRM is a good example of a device that makes customer and employee management more efficient; helping you save time and retain clients. Manage Your Marketing and Sales Efforts
Optimizing your marketing practices is a direct way of closing more sales and driving your profits upwards. That said, many marketing and sales management tools often overlap or complement CRM systems, but they still have value unto themselves. For all things sales related, you'll want to use a product like Hubspot. This marketing software drives inbound leads by using marketing automation like social media, blogging, SEO and marketing analytics, providing tools to glean more traffic that eventually will be converted into sales.
There may be hundreds of helpful platforms out there, but if you're using these tools to strengthen your startup, you're already on the right track to making more money. Take advantage of what's available to you, and prepare to see your profits rolling in.
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