5 Apps To Help Grow Your Business

There is an app for just about everything. There must be hundreds of apps that claim to improve the efficiency of your business but not every app will live up to that promise. These new tech trend in business world are really playing a vital part in business growth.

We have shortlisted five top apps that are popular in the business world due to their ability to increase efficiency and productivity in the workplace and thus help grow your business.

1)     Abukai

Abukai’s slogan is actionable business productivity and its claim is that is the world’s quickest and easiest way to create expense reports. This certainly seems to be the case since this app was given the “Editor’s Choice” award in 2011 by PC Magazine and rated 4.5 out of 5 stars for outstanding business expensing applications.

Compatible with almost any mobile device, the Abukai app makes filing financial reports a synch in three easy steps:

I.        Take a picture of any receipt or invoice with your mobile device

II.       Submit it to the app

III.     Receive a completed expense report at the end of a designated period (week or month)

Abukai’s receipt scanner eliminates the need to type data from receipts. It categorizes expenses and looks up exchange rates and creates and emails your expense report once you have submitted your receipts. For its convenience, it was named one of the six Best Mobile Small Business Apps by Staples as well as one of the Top 5 Apps for Investing and Finance by Nasdaq.

Downloading the app is free and includes 12 expense reports per year, with each report counted as sets of 10 receipts. Additional expense report submissions or customization require subscription to an ABUKAI Expenses account plan available at abukai.com/buy.

2)      Hootsuite

Hootsuite allows all your social media accounts to be managed from one place. Hootsuite Mobile is the most widely used social media management solution on both iOS and Android with over 7 million downloads in 196 countries.

Users can publish messages, images, videos and GIFS to multiple social media networks including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. Using Hootsuite, social media content can be scheduled anytime from your mobile. It also allows last minute changes such as fixing a typo in a message scheduled by your team back in the office.

Free for up to 3 social network accounts, it is a top app in aiding management of social media and tracking social media analytics. You can monitor your brand even when you are not sitting at your desktop as well as receive notifications for Twitter and Facebook updates when people mention your brand or talk about keywords you follow. Furthermore, campaigns and analytics can be managed, updates scheduled, and messages translated and published to and from over 50 languages through Hootsuite. You can also view several different types of reports for each of the built-in social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which is extremely helpful for a quick, close to real-time analysis of how each account is performing.

3)    LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals, with over 380 million members worldwide of which 128 million users are in the USA. The LinkedIn app can be used as your own personal marketing team, even if the marketing team is so small that it just consists of you, the entrepreneur. Using the LinkedIn app you can connect with prospective clients, business partners, freelancers, and suppliers.

LinkedIn is available in over 24 languages in more than 200 countries and helps create and maintain business connections and industry contacts among employers and professionals. Companies can present themselves through online pages and enhance their connectedness in their area of expertise. During a January 2014 survey, it was found that 71 percent of respondents regarded LinkedIn as a trustworthy source of professional content, according to UK business professionals.

As per another survey, 45 percent of the internet users in the USA with a household income of more than USD 75,000 use LinkedIn. This means that LinkedIn can help ensure that you can target the right professionals and demographics for your cliental as well as your vendor base. You can also use LinkedIn to recruit employees with the kind of resumes you are looking for.

4)     Evernote

Evernote helps keep tracks of important documents and notes. It’s a handy tool for taking notes effectively during meetings and for organizing your thoughts and planning your content. Since it is not dependent on internet connectivity, you can use it any time.

Evernote works like a digital notebook that keeps tracks of your ideas so that you can revisit them later. From notes on client calls to outlining blog posts, it can organize all of your business information.

Though Evernote is free, Evernote Business is available for $12 per month that allows you to easily collaborate with everyone on your team. Thus you can invite your co-workers to join specific notebooks or you can leave notes for your employees.

While Evernote has 65 million users, two-thirds of the users utilize this app at the office eliminating the need for back-and-forth messaging between employees for triple-confirmations, the sharing and re-sharing of lost Google Docs and long confusing email threads that never seem to die. Designers, marketers, C-suiters, salespeople, technical teams, all involved can have shared knowledge regarding all of your company’s pertinent information.

By smoothing out the flow of information between different departments and concerned people, Evernote can increase the efficiency of your business.

5)     Trello

As per an article by survey gizmo, “Trello is a dream come true if your business is run and supported by teamwork (and really, what business isn’t built on the hopes and dreams of its team of employees?)”. Trello eases collaboration, ensuring that everyone stays on the same page. By having an entire project broken down into manageable tasks in a centralized location, Trello offers ease and convenience.

Trello allows customization of workflows for different projects. Checklists can be made and comments added for co-workers and employees to see. It also allows files to be attached from Google Drive and Dropbox and uploads of photos and videos.

Trello increases productivity by making sure that all of the information that your teams need to complete projects is listed in one place. Once a task is completed, the bulletin can simply be dragged from the “in Progress column, to the “Completed” column. A notification can be sent out when this occurs. As per Lifehacker, “Trello is one of those few apps that actually balances both a simple, elegant user interface and powerful, flexible features.”

Trello is free and available for iPhone and Android both. As per its latest update, it is available offline too.

These apps increase efficiency by improving coordination within your company, be it coordination between departments or team members, coordination between vendors or coordination across all social media platforms.

But apps are just one of the many ways you can use mobiles to grow your business. For example, mobile ads are noticed by 89% of smartphone users so approaching a mobile publisher you can increase revenue by connecting with more consumers. Whichever way you choose to use technology to grow your business, be sure that these 5 apps will help you to do so, regardless of the industry you are in.