Need help? Small-business owners may appreciate these tech tools

Owning your own business is time-intensive by its very nature, and it can notoriously be exhausting.

One recent study found 19 percent of U.S. entrepreneurs work 60 hours or more per week, while 30 percent work 50 to 59, and 33 percent work 40 to 49. So much for work-life balance.

“Every small-business owner faces the same dilemma: How do we ever manage to get anything finished with so many things on our to-do list,” asks Rhonda Abrams in USA Today. “Small-business owners and entrepreneurs constantly are being tugged in many directions, so they need to make the most of almost every minute.”

One aspect that might help is the variety of tools now available that can help keep you organized and make the most of your resources. Some can take busywork off your plate, freeing up more time for business strategy — or perhaps even a day off. Consider how the following small-business marketing solutions may help you optimize your time.

15Five: Use this reporting tool to keep a handle on what the rest of your team is accomplishing in a given week, helping you gauge productivity.

FreshBooks: This intuitive cloud-based accounting software lets you automate normally time-consuming tasks, including the tracking of your time, expenses and client interactions, and works with apps you probably already use.

Hatchbuck: A CRM aimed at small businesses, Hatchbuck takes over where spreadsheets, filing systems and email folders leave off, helping you continually add contacts, view real-time activity and get alerts on important leads. It leaves out extraneous (read: expensive) features you probably don’t need.

Get Satisfaction: This customer community platform fosters better interaction with your customers by integrating with your social media, enabling self-service customer support and gathering feedback.

SurveyMonkey: For small businesses with little to no budget for market research, this handy tool allows for the design of customized surveys that help you gauge customer preferences and needs.

Slack: The name of this project management/internal communications tool may throw you for a loop, but it works hard for you when you need to organize and collaborate.

PandaDoc: This quick, deployable document manager software enables you to send documents nearly instantly when seeking important signatures.

The Whether: A user-friendly inbound recruiting platform, The Whether helps you find, engage with, and hire college students in ways that transcend traditional recruiting.

In short, taking time to explore the many tech tools out there could be well worth your time.

“With software and hardware being around for so long, you’d think we business owners would know all the benefits of technology in our businesses,” notes a recent article by the Small Business Administration. “But here’s the rub: a lot of technology change has occurred in just the past five years. Given the speed at which technology is traveling, you might want to take a second look at how technology can help you become more successful in business.”

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