What software, people or services does your business rely on?
No business is an island. We all rely on services, people or software to help us tick. Here's a list of ours.
All businesses, large or small, depend to some degree on other people, services or software to help them tick along. Here we share a list of 6 people, services or software applications that are currently making the biggest impact on the running of our business, in that hope that some may also be useful to you.
There are simple criteria for inclusion on the list – the service in question must provide one (or more) of the following benefits:
- Save us time.
- Save us money.
- Make our lives easier.
- Help us provide a higher level of service to our customers.
1. Basecamp – easy online collaboration and project management
The success of a project of any kind depends on clear, quality communication. We quickly realised very early on that while we communicated with clients very well in person, over the phone and by email, it was all too easy for threads to be lost, emails to be accidentally wiped, messages to go AWOL, all despite our best efforts.
We desperately craved a way to centralise project-related communications, plans, thoughts, files, to-dos and important milestones; preferably online, but more importantly via a means that our clients, even the exceedingly non-technical, could very easily understand and use.
We tried many bloated, badly designed, hard-to-understand systems, before we discovered Basecamp from 37 Signals. It’s a simple online project management system that we’ve used daily ever since, for nearly 3 years now.
Our clients love it (they have total access to their project and can get involved); we love it (it makes our lives immeasurably easier, and frankly makes us look great into the bargain), and, honestly, I don’t really know what we’d do without it!
2. Highrise – simple CRM and contact manager
Also from 37 Signals is Highrise, a simple online contact management system. It’s an antidote to the overly-complicated CRM systems that litter office computer systems the world over.
Granted, Highrise would actually be even more useful for a larger company than ours, but even for a small operation like ourselves it’s quickly become absolutely essential to our day-to-day running. The main benefit is that it’s online and web-based, so anyone can access the system from any computer, at any time, without having to install software. It’s cheap too – to be honest we’re currently using the free plan (there are various plans available, priced from free all the way up to $149 a month – eek!) and it’s more than meeting our needs.
We track all our key contacts, clients, colleagues and customers, as well as important potential leads or prospects. Using the system is simplicity itself – easily add notes about conversations, create tasks or reminders for the future (e.g “follow-up call to Peter re. visuals next Wednesday“, “send thank you note to Louise“, etc.) and (very cleverly) bring email into the workflow.
You have to actually see to believe the genius of what happens when you forward or BCC an email into the Highrise system…
3. Blinksale – web-based invoicing tool
We run our office on Apple Macs. It’s fair to say that there’s generally a dearth of good quality, easy-to-use accountancy and invoicing software for the Mac platform.
We actually spent years trying to (frustratingly) coax various invoicing software solutions into some passable working order before discovering the answer to our prayers:
Blinksale is an online, highly secure invoicing system. We love it because we can access it from any computer we happen to be at; it’s just so easy to create and send really professional looking invoices very quickly; it keeps track of due dates, reminders, thank-you notes and late fees so we don’t have to; and most importantly, it helps us keep the cash flowing!
4. Tick – time-tracking to help you hit budgets
When I first started this business I was advised many times to ‘keep a log of your time’. So I did (I always take advice… well, occasionally anyway!) but always had the feeling I was tracking time spent on projects for the sake of it.
Tick changed all that, and has in the process completely transformed the efficiency and profit potential of our business – it’s really that good.
Like many of our clients, our ‘product’ is essentially our service, and our inventory is really hours, or time spent on each project. Spend too long on a job and the profit disappears in a puff of smoke.
Tick is an online, web-based, collaborative application that allows all our team members to log time spent, along with notes about what they were doing. As project manager (and overall boss) I tell Tick how many hours are budgeted for each project – essentially, the total project cost divided by our hourly rate.
Tick then logs and tracks that time, but most importantly displays a big fat progress bar, showing us a percentage of the total hourly budget we’ve ‘spent’ so far. Talk about keeping us on track!
With Tick we now know…
- Exactly how long projects take;
- Exactly where the time is spent;
- If we’ve made a profit.
- What to charge in future for similar jobs, with a great degree of confidence.
5. Scribes – great printing service
If you live in Hull and require printing services, I highly recommend a visit to Scribes on Newland Avenue (map). Owner Carl provides a stellar service and has never let us down (and no, he’s not paying us to say this either!)
We’ve been personally using Carl’s services for close on 15 years and it’s fair to say that it just gets better and better – better quality; quicker turnaround; better service.
An example: this week we had an important proposal and a new client pack we needed printing and binding very professionally. I was, as usual, in something of a hurry. One quick (attachment-laden) email to Scribes was all it took – a friendly reply in my inbox just 10 minutes later telling me the work was ready for collection.
Beautifully bound and printed too – strike one for saved time and stress, and strike another for helping us provide a top notch service to our clients. Thanks Carl.
6. Chance Cafe – top notch local, organic food
We all need a hard-earned refill during the working day, and for us nothing beats a visit to Chance Cafe on Chanterlands Avenue, Hull.
Luckily for us it’s a mere hop, skip and a jump from our office. Even luckier that Matt, the very friendly and amenable owner, proudly serves just about the best lunchtime organic food we could possibly hope for, at great prices. He stocks a mean line in general organic groceries too, and is justifiably proud of the food he offers.
Well worth a visit – and no, we’re not being paid for recommending this one either!
We could go on…
So there you have it: 6 people, services or software applications that positively impact in some way on our business, from helping us get paid, to communicating with our customers, to keeping our bellies full of good food! All important stuff.
I can easily think of another 15 off the top of my head, 6 is just the tip of the iceberg…
What key products or services keep your own business humming along? We’d love to hear about them!
What next?
To discuss how to make a success of your business online, give us a call on 0845 1308389 for a completely no-obligation chat.
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