In the following article, I’ve put together a list of software categories that every business manager should have. Whether you use a system or a phone.
This list will provide you with a proven system for managing your business better and increasing revenue. With the right tools, the task of running a business gets faster, simpler and can grow at nearly an exponential rate.
Best Business Process Management Software – Nintex Promapp
Nintex Promapp is a business process management software that helps organizations share process knowledge through a central repository. The tool is designed in a way that it facilitates the development of simple visual tools out of complex process maps, documents, and Visio charts – making it easy for your team to track changes in the process
Suitable for teams belonging to any industry and of any size, Promapp allows teams to collaborate together in real-time through a dashboard and easily monitor progress. By applying the ‘processes I’m in’ filter, you can gain access to only particular processes and then move forward along the way. You can also bookmark your favorite processes to further improve accuracy.
This business management software provides a comprehensive solution covering a broad range of processes ranging from basic document management to more elaborate workflow automation and built-in risk and compliance management, to name a few.
Key Features
- Personalized dashboards
- Configurable tags for identifying processes
- Risk and compliance management
- Automated workflow management
- Documents management
- Process variation management, along with cost changes
- One-click process feedback
- Integration with third-party apps
Pricing Plans
- Nintex Promapp’s pricing works on grounds of the number of processes added. The license starts from $950/month.
Best Business Resource Planning Software – TeamGantt
Nothing beats a classic Gantt chart software for resource planning of a project. This next business management software serves a similar purpose. TeamGantt allows you to use a simple Gantt chart for your project scheduling and resource planning.
Assign as many resources to a task as you want, along with their working hours to make resource planning effective. The details about resources working on a particular task can be viewed by applying a filter and identifying the individual resource workload, so that you can allocate tasks according to the capacity, avoiding burnouts.
The easy drag and drop interface of the tool lets you quickly make changes according to the schedule, without causing any unnecessary delays.
Key Features
- Drag and drop functionality
- Gantt charts, along with filters
- Multiple customizable task views
- Planned timeline vs. Actual timeline viewer
- Task assignment to multiple team members
- Workload view by task or hours
- Actual vs. estimated hours for time tracking
- Task dependencies
- Resource availability tab
Pricing Plans
- TeamGantt provides Free and paid subscription plans.
- The paid plans start from $49.75 per month for a team of up to 5 members. The price changes with the number of team members.
Best Business Marketing Software – HubSpot
Hubspot is the next one of the best business management software you can use for marketing and sales automation. The software offers a wide variety of tools to cater to each and every aspect of your inbound marketing. It goes without saying that Hubspot is one of the powerful marketing solutions one can go for.
From your website traffic and leads management, to more elaborate CRM and sales management, Hubspot seems to manage it all. Specifically designed to improve your time when it comes to sales management, Hubspot tracks every customer interaction down to the most basic details.
With features like email sequencing, email tracking, and prospect profiles, the software provides a single platform for automating the tasks faster than ever. Through content strategy and SEO management tools, Hubspot makes sure your content reaches the right audience at the most optimum time.
Key Features
- Leads management
- Website traffic management
- Email tracking
- Sequential emails
- Templates and canned emails
- Live chat on the website
- Pipeline management
- SEO and content strategy tools
- Third-party access
Pricing Plans
- The Marketing plan of Hubspot offers a Free plan, along with paid ones.
- The paid plans start from $50 per month.
Best Business Resource Planning Software – ProductPlan
ProductPlan is one of the best business management tools that can help you create and manage your product or project map. This tool is preferred by project managers to create a visual roadmap that their projects will follow. From product development, software testing, to project completion, this roadmapping tool can be used to manage your projects from start to finish.
Moreover, you can collaborate with your team to create the visual roadmap of your product, apply estimates, building work in the process to let your team know the complete picture of your plan. It has an easy drag and drop interface that can help you make the product timeline, and remove the obstacle in the development phase.
To give your roadmaps a fun activity to create you can use different color codes for the progress bar, set milestones, and make a connection with dependent items with many other amazing features to nail your project.
Key Features:
- Timeline and list view for roadmap based on dates
- Create multiple roadmaps in your master plan for an entire product portfolio
- Make use of planning board to manage backlog items
- Create milestones and set the connections between taskbars
- Easy drag and drop functionality
- Create a private link and share it with stakeholders
Pricing:
- Business plan at $39/month per user when paid annually
- Enterprise plan at $69/month per user
- Enterprise Plus plan at $99/month per user
Best Business Live Chat Software – ProProfs Chat
ProProfs Chat is a cloud-based customer support software that enables business owners to build delightful experiences to visitors with instant help. It even helps your support teams to connect faster with visitors in real-time and become more proactive with features like visitor monitoring and chat greetings.
Its detailed reports section helps you capture useful insights that assist your support team members identify the problem areas faster and work towards improving future support experiences.
Key Features:
- Use predefined messages reduce response time
- Reduce tickets by up to 80% with knowledge base integration
- Share chat sessions with other operators in real-time
- Announce sales, discounts, upcoming updates
- Set up automated greetings based on visitor behavior
- Provide chat support in 70+ languages
- Create a support bundle with 50+ integration options
- Monitor chat operators closely and view reports
Pricing Plans:
- Offers both free and paid plans to users.
- Paid plan starts at $10/user/month.
- You can try premium features with their 15 days free trial.
Bitrix24
If you are looking for a software that offers a complete suite of management, collaboration, and communication tools, then Bitrix24 could be the ideal choice for your business. It is a complete business management software that takes care of your tasks and projects to document management along with real-time communication tools from video conferencing to group chat.
Top features:
- An internal social network lets you collaborate easier, faster and more efficiently
- Get instant feedback, share ideas, create workgroups and engage your employees
- online multi-user editing and custom document approval workflows
- Sell more with Bitrix24’s CRM and sales team management
- It works on your iPhone, iPad or Android too
Apptivo
Apptivo delivers a wide array of functionalities in customer relationship management (CRM). It also helps your business to grow with project management, invoicing, and timesheet capabilities. If your business process has some specific needs, it can be easily customized.
Top features:
- Track the complete sales process from anywhere with the online CRM software
- Collaborate on tasks, manage timesheets, and log expense reports
- Powerful ticketing system to deliver stellar customer support
- Billing system to send and receive online payments from anywhere
- Supply chain management with vendor tracking, purchasing, and inventory
HoneyBook
HoneyBook is an all-in-one business management platform and company management system. From first contact to booking your ideal client, HoneyBook makes it easy for you to capture leads, manage projects, automate workflows, send contracts and invoices, and get paid.
Top features:
- Mobile app so you can manage your business on the go
- Proposals and invoices optimized to get you booked
- Contracts your clients can sign in seconds
- Easy and intuitive workflows
- Design forward client experience
Atlassian JIRA
JIRA is a workflow mapping and project planning software that is designed to help software development teams of all sizes and industries. Kanban boards, burnout charts, project reporting tools, etc are some of the popular capabilities of this tool that support teams at various stages of the development lifecycle. Also, it integrates with various developer tools and is available as a cloud-based or on-premise solution.
Top features:
- Roadmaps that are connected to real work
- Visualizing work in progress
- Bugs and defect management
- Polished user experience
- Customizable dashboards and wallboards
Flodesk
Flodesk is a fast-growing email marketing service for small businesses. Their focus is on design, enabling small business owners to create beautiful emails and showcase their brand. Flodesk offers workflows that allow users to automate lead magnet delivery, welcome sequences, and more with an easy-to-use visual builder.
Key features:
- Fixed price of $38 per month, regardless of list size
- Unlimited subscribers & unlimited email sends
- Drag-and-drop email builder with layout blocks
- Create email signup forms, even without a website
- Create automated email sequences
StudioCloud
StudioCloud has made a name for itself as a reliable business management platform and company management system in much less time. It is a one-stop solution for your business needs that contains all the features you need to manage your business anytime, anywhere. Go check this business tool to organize and simplify your life.
Top features:
- Manage clients, partners, and vendors at one place
- Create and send professional invoices
- Send automated, personalized, text and email reminders
- Have clients review and sign contracts online
- Easily customize the look and feel of your software
Best Project Management Software – nTask
Forget about effective business management without using a dedicated project management tool. That’s why we’re starting off the list with nTask. A project management software coming with a multitude of features to help you complete your business projects successfully.
nTask comes with powerful native modules that provide a multi-dimensional solution to all your project needs. A single platform to plan, collaborate and monitor your project performance without switching applications. With nTask, you can get a holistic view of what lies ahead in your project lifecycle.
Through beautiful Gantt charts and built-in timesheets, the tool also allows you to track your project performance seamlessly.
Let’s see what you can accomplish through nTask:
Top Features
- Create and manage your projects through systematic workflow which allows you to add things as you move along with the project
- Use it as a to-do list app and assign tasks instantly to your team members and make roles transparent
- Automatically repeat tasks by setting task recurrence according to a frequency of your choice
- Execute successful team meetings through powerful native meeting management solution which lets you take control of your meeting details with more precision
- Create and associate issues with your respective projects and resolve them proactively through smart issue metrics, like issue severity and issue priority
- Safeguard your project from potential hazards by documenting risks earlier in the project lifecycle
- Monitor your project performance through built-in Gantt charts and auto-generating timesheets
- Communicate with your team members and provide timely feedback through comments within tasks
Pricing Plans
nTask comes with three plans:
- Free plan: unlimited tasks, unlimited meetings, timesheet reporting, and unlimited workspaces
- Premium plan: starting at $2.99 – unlimited projects and Gantt Charts.
- Looking for a complete Business Management Software?See for yourself why teams trust nTask for end-to-end business and project management. Create unlimited, tasks, meetings & more.
- Get Started for Free
Best Team Communication Software – Slack
Slack is where team collaboration is. No matter at what stage your business might be, the chances of information slipping through the cracks is real. Save yourself the horror of miscommunication and choose Slack as a professional team collaboration tool.
Whether you’re onboarding a new employee, sharing critical files, planning your next meeting, or simply exchanging routine messages, Slack has you covered! With distinct channels for multiple teams, Slack not only makes team communication easier but better.
Not only this, but Slack also comes with hundreds of integrations to serve your respective project needs. Through these integrations, the software makes sure you don’t have to constantly switch applications for executing basic business functions.
Key Features
- Specific channels for teams, projects, or topics
- Hundreds of third-party application integrations
- Search option for instant access to desired messages
- Customized availability statuses
- In-app notifications
Pricing Plans
- Free and paid plans. Paid plans start from $6.67
Best Financial Management Software – FreshBooks
Quite a popular tool for invoicing and accounting, FreshBooks is one of the best small business management software when it comes to financial management. Coming with a complete suite of accounting features, FreshBooks provides a fast and reliable solution for creating quick invoices, tracking expenses, and much more.
Through native time tracking, you can easily monitor the time your team is spending on tasks and bill your clients accordingly.
Not only this, but the tool also facilitates project management through an elaborate feature set for effectively handling project-related activities. Few prominent features include centralized file location, team chat, and project assignment.
Key Features
- Expense tracking
- Time tracking
- Invoicing
- Cost estimates
- Accounting reports
- Dashboards
- Customized team permissions
- Team chat
Pricing Plans
- The tool comes with paid plans which start from $15 per month. All plans come with a free trial of 30 days.
Best Business Team Collaboration Software – Chanty
Chanty is aimed to boost team collaboration and productivity in all business segments. Chanty lets you stay in touch with your team in private, public, group and one-on-one conversations. The Teambook keeps all your messages, tasks, files, and links in order. Chanty offers audio calling and video conferencing functionality with screen sharing. It has a built-in task manager with the Kanban board, that allows you to turn messages into tasks, assign a teammate to perform the task, set a due date and priority.
Voice messaging lets you instantly communicate with your team in audio format. Chanty integrates with Trello, Asana, Zapier, Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive, Github, Gitlab, Bitbucket, Mailchimp, Giphy, and other apps.
Key Features
- Unlimited message history
- Private, public, group and one-on-one conversations
- Integrations
- Audio/video calls
- Voice messaging
- Built-in task management
- Kanban board
Pricing Plans
- Free basic plan
- Business plan starts at $3/user per month
Best Email Service – Gmail
Email serves as a critical component of a robust business management system, which is why the 4th tool in our roundup of best business management software is Gmail. Powered by Google, Gmail is one of the most widely used email platforms around.
An easy to use application, coming with an array of free features, Gmail is a go-to option for most individuals for personal and professional communication alike.
With powerful spam filtering, the application automatically detects junk and keeps it out of your inbox. Furthermore, the program organizes emails into designated folders according to their type and categorizes them as primary, social, promotions, and others.
Key Features
- Spam filtering
- Email categorization
- Free storage
- Conversation threads
- Instant messaging
- Video chat
- Virus and malware scanning
- Search bar
- Language support
- Offline access
- Powerful sync with other applications
Pricing Plans
- Gmail is free for personal use. The business account plans start from $5 per user/month, with a free trial of 14 days.
Conclusion
For most home-based or small business owners, it is essential to establish a good management system. Another important thing which you need to do is using the right tools and software to help you in creating a good management system that is going to be effective in managing your business in a better way. There are various types of software which you can use to help you in your management tasks. Here in this article, we will take a look at some of these business management softwares so that you can have an idea of what kind of software will work best for your needs.