Free Online Tools For SMEs To Enhance Your Business
In the years prior to 2020 we agreed that the economy was tough for small businesses, with research showing that a large amount of SMEs would fail within their first two years. Now though, Covid has been hailed as the Great Disrupter, bringing an additional layer of pressure for businesses to fight through.
It’s no surprise that companies of all sizes, from the ‘Fortune 500’ big guys to the smaller start-ups, have felt the severe repercussions of mandatory lockdowns, social distancing measures, and seismic shifts in consumer behaviour.
But Covid didn’t just disrupt entire markets for the worse. It also disrupted technology, blowing up the digital space and ushering in a wealth of strategies, resources, and online tools to help small businesses survive and even succeed.
In this article, we want to talk about the free online tools available to SMEs, because we believe that these resources could enhance your business by improving efficiencies, increasing productivity, and promoting growth.
Free Online Tools Worth Considering
We’ve helpfully broken down our top free online tools into five main categories, including marketing, accounting, productivity, communication, and project management.
Free Online Marketing Tools
1. HubSpot CRM: An easy-to-use tool that unites sales, marketing, and customer service within the same platform, allowing you to track deals, monitor campaign performance, schedule social media posts, send emails, and much more.
2. Canva: With pre-formatted templates you can create nearly every visual asset that your business needs, from social media banners and marketing posters to gift certificates and various documents.
3. MailChimp: This all-in-one email marketing platform allows you to send up to 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers at no cost, and comes with many handy features, including easy-to-use templates, advanced analytics, and one-click personalisation.
4. Buffer: An intuitive and streamlined social media management tool that offers actionable insights so that you can achieve meaningful engagement.
Free Online Accounting Tools
1. FNB instant free accounting software: Enjoy a variety of functions that will help you manage your day-to-day business finances. Free for FNB business account holders.
2. WAVE: User-friendly Canadian software which can be adapted to utilise South Africa’s tax framework so you can get reliable billing, payroll, and accounting entries for financial statements.
3. Money Manager EX: A free, open-source accounting programme that you import a CSV file from your bank into and easily monitor your budget and cash flow from.
Free Online Productivity Tools
1. Calendly: No more scheduling nightmares when you use this free app to book meetings and appointments, send reminder emails, and reschedule meetings.
2. Signeasy: This eSignature software helps you sign, send, and collect documents for signature so you can close deals on the same day.
3. Station: Software that groups all the available and used apps in your business in a smart way along with different tabs. It also opens web pages in a single place, allowing you to multitask across various accounts much quicker.
Free Online Communication Tools
1. Slack: A messaging app that connects you with anyone inside or outside your organisation through personalised and dedicated work channels that facilitate group discussions, one-off conversations, audio calls, and file sharing
2. Flock: Team messaging software that acts as a business collaboration hub from which your team can communicate through direct and group messaging, video conferencing, file sharing, company directories, and custom team mailing.
Free Online Project Management Tools
1. nTask: This app allows you to manage tasks and projects more efficiently, with both a basic free account and access to low cost features if you want to upgrade.
2. Trello: Visually organise and prioritise team projects just like a project manager would using the app’s impressive interface and Kanban-style workflow!
3. Asana: An amazing task management tool that helps your team stay on top of their responsibilities, collaborate from anywhere, track the progress of different projects, identify bottlenecks, and streamline workflows.
Go Forth And Be Big
The immediate, reliable, and secure access to free online software and tools aimed at helping SMEs operate more efficiently, communicate more effectively, and market themselves in a way that puts them out there amongst the big brands is nothing short of incredible.
We trust that this list will help point you in the right direction! And if you need any help finding reliable and affordable Internet connectivity that will power your business to do more, then talk to us.
