Tech tools to help your business get over its growing pains

Starting a new business is a great moment in any entrepreneur’s life. But after the company is up and running, the hard part often follows: actually running and growing it.

No matter where your organization is in its growth cycle, getting to that next level can be difficult. That is as true now as it was 50 years ago. Managers and owners today have one great advantage — technology. It won’t solve all your problems, but certain tech tools can help simplify expansion.

Many services allow you to scale up or down easily with a few touches of a button and little impact to your wallet. These make for ideal solutions whenever you need to ramp up your headcount, capabilities, offerings or physical footprint. Try out the following tools and you will be able to sidestep some of the worst growing pains that all businesses face.

Group Communication Platforms

Interoffice email is old news. Employees, especially younger ones, see it as a waste of time. So modern companies go beyond email to allow everyone to communicate more efficiently in mobile-native platforms that are better suited to the on-the-go lifestyle of today’s ambitious employees.

Slack is one option that has moved to the forefront as the best regarded technology to handle a company’s collaboration needs. It offers a free version for smaller-volume users that can be expanded to the pro version when needed. With old-world companies like Comcast, Walmart and the New York Times already among its client base, there is no doubting its ability to work for newer organizations with fewer legacy practices and stodgy cultures to overcome.

File Storage and Sharing

Collaboration is not just communication. You will also need to share documents, spreadsheets and images. More and more companies are foregoing costly internal servers that need to be stored and maintained. Instead, they are relying on cloud-based providers, including Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive and Box.

Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, but their functionality is generally simple and similar. It comes down to which interface and pricing plan works best for your business. For small companies, the free plans are often sufficient, while some low-cost options can add a lot of capacity if that becomes necessary.

Accounting

Keeping track of the books is a must for a firm of any size, and the days of doing everything offline in a file stored on a single computer — that could malfunction at any time — are becoming a thing of the past. Companies that specialize in accounting software offer much more than an Excel spreadsheet ever could. They give their clients the ability to maintain inventory management processing, customer contact databases, automated purchasing and shipping, and tracking for individual jobs and projects all in one place.

Sage 50c accounting software is one market leader that can take the complexity out of the process and allow even novices to manage company finances with ease. One popular feature Sage offers is different tiers so that businesses can add on additional features as their business grows while not over-complicating the process early on.

Web Design

Your firm’s primary website is how you now show yourself to the world. There is no room to skimp on such an important part of your brand and identity, but it doesn’t have to cost tens of thousands of dollars, either.

Web design services like Wix take the coding out of web design and allow almost anyone to create a professional-looking website from scratch. Staying modern, hip and up to date with your website’s look is critical to attracting new users. So if you need an upgrade to get to that next level, start here before paying a web designer who will likely use the same services that you handle on your own.

Many companies continue doing things the way they were done last century because it seems like the proven, trusted method. While long-held best practices do have their place in some respects, technology is changing how to optimally get work done. So what is your company waiting for? Stop living in the past and plug in to the future.