In a great infograph from SalesForce, we can see quite a number of apps that small business owners could be using to help run their business from their smartphone. According to their research, roughly a third of U.S. small business owners are using these kinds of apps, for tasks like banking or customer relationship management. But that means that over two thirds of small business owners are missing out on this technological opportunity to be flexible in their management.
Just as we’ve discussed here on The Social Media Hat, business owners already wear too many hats. A typical small business owner has their business responsibilities, as well as those of an accountant, human resources, computer repair, carpenter, plumber and sometimes even therapist. It’s challenging because owners often feel as though they can never leave their office, for fear that things won’t get done. While some might argue that excessive smart phone usage can lead to never being able to separate work from the rest of your life, I have found that these kinds of capabilities allow me to spend time out of the office that I might not have been able to do otherwise.
Here’s the breakdown from the infograph:
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT APPS
- QuickBooks
- Mint
- Office Time
FILE STORAGE
- Box
- Dropbox
DOCUMENT EDITING
- Evernote
- Documents To Go
COMMUNICATION
- Skype
- Webex
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
- Desk
- Get Satisfaction Mobile
MONETARY TRANSACTIONS
- Square
- Google Wallet
Personally, I’ve used Dropbox, Evernote and Skype, and I would swear by Evernote. I use Evernote to draft blogs and blog ideas, take notes during meetings, track project details, and more. Intuit is my credit card processor, and they have their own Square-like app called GoPayment which works great.
I would also add that every small business owner needs to be using their smartphone for social media marketing and engagement, and that HootSuite Pro is the ideal app for that. Wherever you’re at, you can post status updates to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (not Google+ from the app, yet), and monitor the conversations taking place on those platforms.
Have you used any of these apps yourself yet? Which ones are your favorites? What would you add to the list?
More importantly, what can’t you do from your smartphone that’s a critical aspect of your business? Is it something technology might enable someday? There are plenty of day-to-day tasks that are requirements of my business that require a computer, like Drupal programming or even setting up a webpage. In fact, I can’t even fully publish a blog post since my iPhone does not permit file uploads – but that’s something that could easily be addressed at any time.
What do you think?