Tech Tools for Women-Owned Businesses

Tips from Black Swan Consulting, Inc.

It is delightfully noticeable that gradually women are rising to leadership positions and entrepreneurial journeys handling their own businesses. These gradual steps can become a key factor to empower women and put a full stop to many issues they have been facing in their work environment which are clearly unfair and unreasonable. Unequal pay, fewer career opportunities, underestimation of their competence are few to be pointed out. In today’s world, women are aware, strong, independent, and actively involved in shifting the perception and raising above all the stereotypes which had been limiting them. They are successfully handling and leading big companies. Let’s consider a few women who are living examples of this, Wang Laichun, Gina Rinehart, Cher Wang, Indra Nooyi, and many more. What’s interesting is, as we are living in a technological era many technological tools can be boon for women handling their own businesses. These tools can boost the efficiency and effectiveness of the business in a significant manner. Strategic planning, financial planning, project management, human resource management, and many other aspects of business can be managed with more ease and less burden using technological tools.  Let’s explore how women can take support of some highly useful technological tools to catalyze the growth of their business. Here are some of the tools.

Hubspot CRM -- Customer Relationship Management Tool.

What can be more important in the long run for a business than managing relationships with their customers? Customers are the heart of the business. It can give a great sense of relief and ease for a business person when she starts using tools like Hubspot CRM. It primarily helps in managing and tracking each and every interaction with past, present, and potential customers. This tool helps in managing and prioritizing contacts in an effective, powerful, and convenient database. The best thing about this tool is that it only takes a few minutes to learn and get a grasp of it. It is highly recommended for a business that deals with a lot of business cards, spreadsheets, LinkedIn connections, and customers.

Wrike -- Project management tool.

Projects drive the organization to new directions bringing new changes, improvements, adapting to new processes. That clearly signifies the importance of projects for the organization. Organizations will have many projects to be managed but primarily projects can be categorized into three aspects: strategic, operations, and sales. It is evident that project management is very important in every business and having a tool that will help us manage these projects effectively is a great advantage. Let's suppose there is a businesswoman Lina, for conducting her business she needs to manage many projects. If she used  " Wrike" which is a project management tool it will give her full visibility and control over all the completed, pending, and upcoming tasks and projects. Hence, she can properly manage every project of her business in the most efficient and effective manner. We can make use of the free trial before deciding to subscribe to the various plans available in “Wrike”.

Deputy -- Human Resources (HR) Management Tool.  

One of the most important assets of any company is its employees.  For a company to keep moving in the right direction there must be the right person doing the right job at the right time. Hence, human resource management can get challenging sometimes, but thanks to technological tools like “Deputy “now we can face these challenges with ease. This tool can help us manage the needs of our company's employees.  It is packed with significant features like task management, auto–scheduling, performance management, time clock/attendance, payroll integration, newsfeed, and many more. If let’s say, Lina, a businesswoman decides to use this tool, she will save money, increase efficiency and teamwork, properly manage performance and tasks. Hence, her company will run smoothly and efficiently.

Wave -- Accounting.

Yes, now there are tools that can manage the income and expenses of our business. These tools are making accounting processes easier than we can think. Just Imagine there is a tool with which you can perform better and faster bookkeeping, invoicing, tracking expenses, accounts payable, managing basic inventory, journal entries, bank reconciliation, and many more, then how smooth can accounting processes get. “Wave “is there to do that for you. It provides a suite of products that work together perfectly to manage our business finances and it also provides cloud accounting systems.  As everything is automated that makes accounting for our business a lot easier. Its interface is pretty simple to use. Here are its primary features, accounting, invoices, payments, receipts, payroll, and personal.

Avast -- Endpoint Protection.

It is really important for businesses in today’s world to be extra careful in protecting their valuable information.  In this age of information, the protection of our business information can have so much impact that it may make or break our business. Hence, Lina, a businesswoman as we mentioned above, must be conscious of various security issues her company can go through like phishing attacks, malware attacks, ransomware, and many more. She can use technological tools like “Avast Endpoint Protection” to avoid being the victim of such cyber-attacks.  The Avast advanced endpoint protection ensures that all devices with network access are protected from hackers and malware.  It is really simple to use and can be updated frequently. The benefits of its features clearly outweigh the price hence investing in it is a sensible decision.

MailChimp -- Email Marketing Platform.

Email marketing can be one of the effective ways of reaching new customers and retaining our present ones. We can deliver targeted messages to our customers. This marketing tactic provides the highest conversion rate.  Let’s go back to Lina, a businesswoman, if she wants to take advantage of email marketing well then she can use a technological tool like MailChimp which will enable her to manage her subscribers, view success and click-through rates, track emails, generate custom reports and many more. MailChimp helps businesses lunch email campaigns. Its primary advantages are custom forms, email blasts, automation, targeted emails, reports and analytics, subscriber profiles, email client testing e.t.c.