If you own a business, especially one that's entirely online, it is likely that you’ve got a distributed workforce. That means your employees (and contractors and partners) are located in different countries around the world.
Running an online business efficiently--and productively--requires the use of various tools and apps that can help you properly communicate with your employees, collaborate easily on multiple projects and hence compensate for the lack of everyday face-to-face interaction that happens in a real world office.
Following are ten tools that every web based business owner should consider for greater efficiency and productivity. All of these general tools that can come in handy irrespective of the type of business you run.
Basecamp
Basecamp is without a doubt the most popular web-based project management tool. Its interface is simple and easy to use, lets you create multiple projects with various customizations, share files, create to-do lists and milestones, and do much more.
Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects is usually considered ahead of Basecamp for online project management in terms of features. However, it's viewed as slightly more difficult to use. Zoho Projects has been surging in popularity since it was launched, and you should take a look at it too.
Google Apps
Google Apps is a package of popular Google tools like Gmail, Google Docs and all, allotted specifically for your domain. Needless to say, it is must-have for any online small business owner, at least for Gmail on your domain if nothing else.
Zoho Suite
Zoho Suite also offers an impressive suite of online tools for businesses (Zoho projects, discussed above, being a part of it). Ranging from docs to wiki, reports to CRM and planner to invoice, there’s a huge number of applications to choose from.
Hipchat
Hipchat is a cool group messaging service that is multi-platform, helps you share files, create chatrooms and lets you collaborate quickly with multiple people in real-time. It replaces the back and forth emails and hence saves time.
Yammer
Yammer is another tool that aims to foster better communication among a group of people. It is a private social network for your business, and has an interface similar to popular social sites (like Twitter).
Skype
Any list that talks about tools for collaboration and conducting business can’t be complete without Skype. Skype remains the defacto method for making audio and video calls online, helping people save tons in phone bills and communicate with friends and colleagues around the world.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a brilliant online backup and synchronization tool that has a host of features to suit individuals as well as small online business owners. It’s easy to setup and has a decent free plan too.
Mozy
Mozy is another popular online backup service and has a product called Mozypro that’s meant for businesses wanting to do a secure data backup on the cloud.
Freshbooks
Most of the online businesses require some form of invoicing and there’s no better tool than Freshbooks. It helps you manage invoices, track time and even manage your accounts. If you are a freelancer or a service provider who manages a team of freelancers, this is an invoicing tool you should consider using.
Pingdom
Unless you are freelancer and don’t own a site or a blog, chances are that your web business is centered around a website (or websites). Pingdom is a monitoring tool that alerts you via emails and SMS when your site goes down. This ensures that you know immediately about downtimes and can take swift action.
Evernote
Evernote can take notes on the desktop, browser and mobile, enables quick capture of anything on the screen and serves as an organization tools for random ideas, text, images and more.
Nowdothis
Last but not the least, we’ve got Nowdothis. This is the simplest of the tools mentioned so far, and yet extremely effective. It helps you get rid of the myriad to-do lists and lets you focus on one thing at a time. And that’s the best way to actually get things done. :)
