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Three Cloud Apps to Boost Small Business Productivity

August 25th, 2010

Maria Helm

Small businesses are relying more on inbound marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO) and social media to create revenues and save money. SEO in particular is an effective way to increase sales and gain additional market share.

Apart from SEO, what else can a small business owner do to increase the bottom line? How about increased productivity? The invention of mobile devices like smartphones, laptops and netbooks, combined with the abundance of wireless connections nowadays, are heavily affecting the way people create and consume information online. This gives way to the road warrior lifestyle, which pertains to a generation of users who get their work done on-the-go.

Originally evident in the PC consumer markets, this computing trend has found its way to the businesses as many companies are slowly adopting the mobile office as a cost-effective solution for extending communication and productivity outside the workplace. This is further supported with the onset of cloud computing which allows you to expand your computer’s capacity and capabilities without investing on infrastructure enhancements and software installations.

With this, all you need is a good and stable Internet connection as both the application you intend to use and even your information will be saved and accessed online. To help you keep your radar on your business, here are a handful of free, essential Web-based applications you can start with.

Home Sweet Office?

April 29th, 2010

Maria Helm

Many small businesses start in the owner’s home as a way to save money. There’s a lot of advantages for businesses to go virtual and work from home. Going virtual keeps your overhead costs low. But not all businesses are meant to operate from homes.

A friend of mine owns a gift basket business and wades through gift basket inventory in her home. Her living room floor is covered with inventory, from dog treats to sports jerseys to bags of cellophane wrapping and ribbons. Her closets are filled with the actual baskets in every shape, color and size. It’s a sign you need to move when you just move each pile from one side of the room to the other.

As the business grows in sales and/or numbers of employees, it becomes time to ditch the PJs or sweats and move away from the spare bedroom or dining room table and into bona fide office. When to know it’s time?

Keep Overhead Costs Low By Going Virtual!

March 26th, 2010

Maria Helm

As many business owners jostle to keep overhead costs low, the cost of leasing an office is something that we rarely consider cutting. However, depending on how your business is structured, going virtual – aka, not having a physical office – may be a practical option.

I’ll use a small design firm I work with of about six employees, as a case study. Here are the many needs that we considered, and that you’ll want to dwell on, if you’re thinking about going virtual:

Time tracking. When it comes to documenting your team’s hours for billing and payroll purposes, there are plenty of time tracking systems with a wide array of features available online. Mashable has a great rundown of online time trackers that range from free to reasonably-priced. I use FreshBooks for my virtual assistance business and I find it efficient and user-friendly. I also recommend Harvest and Freckle – both are robust, well-designed, and reasonably priced.

Project management. Keeping track of tasks, deadlines, and dependencies is crucial, and online project management is a big space with many options. You should budget significant time for investigating and testing as many of these services as possible to determine what best matches your business processes.

Phone system. Sign up for a “virtual switchboard” service, which sets up phone extensions that forward to individual home phone lines. We chose Aptela, because it was affordable and gave us the options we needed, but there are a number of alternatives including RingCentral.

VPN. We bought special Linksys VPN routers to give us secure and easy-to-maintain access to our internal servers and shared files from our homes. It’s worth noting, however, that the setup required some substantial technical knowledge, so I’d suggest speaking with your IT director (or a freelance techie – let me know if you need one) to evaluate how best to affect this change.

Chat. To allow for real-time communication amongst the team, we signed everyone up for a chat service. We selected MSN Live Messenger because it has dependable group chat features, but most other chat services would work just as well.

Screen sharing. Screen sharing has been a huge part of what made it possible for us to go virtual. It allowed us to easily simulate looking over each others’ shoulders while collaborating on a project, as well as easily show a client what we’re working on without being in the same room together. We use GoToMeeting for walking clients through product demos and for collaborating on projects internally. A good option if you don’t want to pay monthly subscription is Glance.

A year and a half later, the firm is still virtual and running more efficiently than ever, all while working from our respective homes, coworking spaces, or wherever we prefer.