As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of “how-to” and “why-to”. That’s why I like to go straight to the source. To the people in real life who are living that thing in real time. You know what I mean? The folks that aren’t just in another business, in another industry, in another continent…they’re the ones who are living it right there at your keyboard. And they’re talking about it on social media.
Here are the best platforms and apps towards growth as a female entreprenuer.
Cherie Blair Foundation for Women
Lack of access to financial services and capital is a significant barrier for women entrepreneurs in Nigeria. With an adult population of 84.7 million (of which only 30% are banked) and with more than 159 million phone subscriptions, there is great potential for agent banking and other models which enable remote access to financial services in Nigeria. Our 2011 research, Women Entrepreneurs in Mobile Retail Channels, demonstrates that the retail channels of mobile operators provide women with rich opportunity to engage in industry and create income, and innovations such as mobile money mean that these opportunities now extend to the financial services sector.
In partnership with Visa, First Bank Nigeria and Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF), the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women provided 2,500 women entrepreneurs in Nigeria with the opportunity to become agents in the retail network of First Bank Nigeria, a leading financial services provider in the country. First Bank Nigeria provided the women entrepreneurs with training on the mobile banking products and agency business. In addition, YTF delivered capacity-building entrepreneurship training to the women.
The project was rolled-out across ten states in Nigeria and, since it launched, 1,600 women have become active Firstmonie banking agents. These women agents are, in turn, providing Nigerians living in rural and underserved areas with branchless banking and mobile financial services.
‘This partnership enables a greater number of women entrepreneurs to enter the rapidly growing mobile money sector, and in turn reach thousands of other women with mobile financial services.’
– Stephen Kehoe, SVP, Head of Global Financial Inclusion at Visa.
Pepperi
E-commerce sales are skyrocketing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and global retail sales hit $27.7 trillion in 2020. Pepperi is a mobile CRM app that makes tracking and managing e-commerce sales that much easier for you. Pepperi is entirely automated and provides you with an overview of your sales and other segments to help you accelerate growth, boost your company’s transparency, and reduce overhead costs.
Dropbox
If you don’t use Dropbox already, you’ve most likely heard of it. This popular app is a cloud storage system that keeps a record of all of your documents all in one place. Data transmission and storage security are crucial for the modern enterprise, and Dropbox allows you to securely store your files right on your phone so you can access them anywhere and at any time.
Nutshell
Nutshell is a customer relationship management app that enables you to integrate your third-party services and apps in one place. This app aims to make contact management, sales automation, and team collaboration that much easier for entrepreneurs and small business owners. It also offers performance tracking tools so you can monitor the success of your sales and marketing. For instance, if you recently developed your own app for your business and released it into the wild of the Apple Store or Google Play Store, Nutshell allows you to monitor its success. Minecraft, for example, sold over 200 million copies in May 2020 while other apps like Fortnite were banned from the app store.
Harvest
Time tracking isn’t easy, but Harvest is looking to change that. This time tracking app integrates with your other workflow apps including your CRM apps, project management apps, proposal apps, and more so you can keep track of multiple things at once. Additionally, you can even add time tracking right into your applications. Harvest provides a few lines of code enabling you to do just that.
Quickbooks
Quickbooks is a popular accounting software for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and large businesses alike. The app automates your bookkeeping tasks so you always know where your business is in terms of financial standing. The software helps you save time on accounting paperwork by generating financial reports easily and efficiently. Within the app, you can also pay your bills, accept credit card payments from customers, and send invoices.
I have always been a good old fashioned pen and paper type of girl when it comes to organizing my life, taking notes and making to do lists but Evernote has been a bit of a game changer for me.
It basically is a powerful note taking app that allows you to capture text, images, voice notes and all of the etails of your life in one place. It can be organized into different ‘notes’ and ‘notebooks’ and you can create ‘to do’ lists which you can check off, set reminders and easily share data with contacts.
For a video of how this app works, check out the link here.
Networking is a game changer when it comes to building a business and brand but can often lead to a pile of crumpled business cards lying in the bottom of your handbag for weeks. Cue introduction to Snap. Snap is designed to make tracking your network leads easy. Just take a picture of the business cards you collect and store the contact information for later use. You can also improve your lead connections by setting up a follow-up email after you have met to be sent as soon as the timing is right, keeping you fresh in their minds.
This app allows you to browse articles at leisure than save them to be read later. Chances are, as a business owner you will be consuming massive chunks of information to help your business grow and develop and you won’t always have the time to read the articles right away. This app sees to that so that articles can be stored and read when you have the time.
Humin allows you to keep track of contacts with an app that contextualizes your entries. This means you no longer have to remember a name to find a person but can search for contacts using smaller details. This can something like where you first met or where the contact works. If you are better with faces, you can use the contact pictures to help you remember names. Humin also allows you to schedule meetings, send emails or make calls to the contacts you store in the app.
Google drive is a bit of a life savior when it comes to managing all of your document as it enables you to save all your important files in one place and is easily accessible through any electronic device. Forget about worrying over losing your files as it is cloud-based and saves documents as you go, when working from within the app. Entrepreneurs can easily share files to co-workers, employees, partners, or clients.
As busy entrepreneurs, we need to find time for ourselves during a hectic day to just chill and zone out. Our poor little brains need some down time every now and then and I’m a big advocate of meditation for giving myself the break I need. Headspace is a great app that allows you to fit meditation into your life easily and on the go. It describes itself as a gym membership for the mind and offers guided meditations and ways to practise mindfulness.
Have to go to a meeting and haven’t a clue how to get there? Let Citymapper guide you there with its options for driving, walking, public transport and even jet pack (lols).
Living in London, this is a total saviour as it tells you how long a journey is going to take, reported delays and guides you easily to your destination. Not available everywhere sadly though.
Allow you to speak out any text you need to send, which is often way quicker than writing it out (purportedly five times faster) With Dragon Dictation you can also dictate status updates directly to your Social Networking applications (Facebook and Twitter) or send notes and reminders to yourself all using your voice. So when you’re on-the-go, stop typing and start speaking – from short text messages to longer email messages, and anything in between.
Need to hire a freenlancer for your business whether it be someone to help you with your website, a personal assistant or someone to edit your podcast? Upwork allows you to search through a huge database of skilled freelancers to find someone for the job.
The Pomodoro technique is essentially a time management technique for helping you to stay focuses. The theory is that you work solidly for a certain period of time then have a short burst of a break. This app works as a ‘digital pomodoro timer’.
Asana
Asana is a project management tool that can be used to organize personal or teamwork. You can organize projects in a list, by timeline, or as a calendar and you can have conversations and manage process within the app.
You can use Asana to reduce the use of email among team members and communicate and collaborate via shared projects.
Trello
Trello is a task management app that provides a visual overview of what is getting worked on as well as who is working on each task. It uses the Kanban system, a scheduling system for lean or on-demand manufacturing that was developed by Toyota to maintain flexibility during production.
Monday
Monday is a team management solution that can help you connect people to processes. It’s made for small to large companies across any industry. Its mission is to provide you with a tool to keep your employees engaged, productive, and happy.
Pricing ranges from $25 per month for the basic plan to $118 a month for Monday’s enterprise plan.
Conclusion
Apps tend to be either loved or hated, and there is a huge range in terms of cost and content. There’s also a lot of negativity around apps such as the rumoured impact on our children’s ability to concentrate and difficulties parents face gaining info about what apps contain and whether they are appropriate for their child to use. You can get started today!