Software Guidelines and Advice for Entrepreneurial Success

Are you the Head of a VSB (Very Small Business) with less than ten employees? Perhaps you are starting up your own business? In this article, you can find our tips on the types of business software to that you can use on a daily basis to facilitate the management of your company and minimize the number of difficulties you may encounter along the way.

How will I achieve my aims and objectives and put my business plan into action? What should be the very first tasks on my to-do list?

Finding customers to breathe life into your company is paramount

Keeping said customers is crucial for development. One-off sales are short-term and weak in terms of sustainability. Therefore it is necessary that you construct client relationships upon trust and reliability

• Operational: Start by creating a professional email account
• Promotional: Communicate more broadly; promote your news and your image. Gain visibility and legitimacy to improve your customer relationships, both in the eyes of current and potential customers and partners.

At the very least, you should be monitoring your accounts. It's all well and good having a sufficient number of clients, but are they paying you as agreed? Tracking and following-up of payments (if necessary) is important.

Part of being a company, no matter how big or small, involves a certain level of exposure to risks. This is why you must ensure the following precautionary measures are put into place. 

A sudden loss of information can have dire consequences. Loss of a client file, dataset or accounting not only wastes time and energy, but your image and credibility could also take a hit, affecting current and future business opportunities.

What can you do if a hacker corrupts your system or demands a colossal ransom? Hacking can happen to anyone, so better to be protected beforehand. Nowadays there are numerous types of malware that exist to keep your data safe and secure. 

SaaS type management solutions likely to help the daily running of your business.

In today’s world setting up a professional email account is an obvious move. But what’s not so obvious is which email server to choose. Zimbra is a collaboration software series for increased efficiency, productivity, and responsiveness. It is one of the most sought after by companies, organizations and associations alike.

• Open source: Customized by Ovea and hosted in France. It stands out for its availability and the quality of its linked services.
• Zimbra Mobile Plus: Syncing across all devices permits you to work on the move: you can access your email account, list of contacts, calendar, and even your work documents as well as receive PUSH notifications.
• Messaging service allows to cut down on the amount of traffic generated by emails 

TigerPro is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, which allows you to analyze commercial loyalty. It can also extend to act as your commercial administration management allowing you to control, regulate and monitor your sales and accounts online. TigerPro is a software in which you can:

• Formulate your differentiated pricing frameworks
• Send quotes to your prospective customers as you would with a quoting software
• Automatically turn these quotes into bills
• Track payments and set reminders for healthy cash flow

With these workflows integrated into a single tool, TigerPro expands the notion of CRM and offers the start of an ERP (Enterprise Ressource Planning) solution, valuable for the creation of businesses and small, developing structures (a dedicated ERP could cover different needs and processes like purchase and stock management, for example). For a deeper accounts management (general accounting, accounts data entry, tax reports...), we suggest that you use a dedicated online accounting software, such as the EBP Compta software, for example.

Now you need to think about how to communicate. With a CRM software such as Send-up multichannel communication allows you to carry out marketing campaigns:

• By email: An intuitive drag-and-drop interface. Once the campaign has been sent, a report detailing the analytics on the sales revenue, in particular, allows you to evaluate the impact in real time. Optimization of the campaigns may be managed via the control panel. 
• By SMS: You can send SMS push to your customers or prospective customers with a specific message
• By fax: Still used in "old school" sectors! Your campaign is exported in pdf and then sent.

Send-up also offers to conduct market and satisfaction surveys via forms and polls.

Data is precious to all businesses (VSBs, SMEs, large businesses). With a database, a contact list, logs of exchanges and work carried out, safeguarding of information should be a priority. Otherwise, you run the risk of a server crash meaning you could lose everything. AdBackup is a software that offers both local and cloud backup, with the guarantee of simple recovery, security, and support.

Backup is one thing, protection is another. When using professional devices: computers, tablets, smartphones; specific apps: email, portals, software... protection from potential malicious attacks is vital. This is what BitDefender offers with its Cloud administration console to configure and roll out a complete cybersecurity system, protecting you both on the Cloud and locally.

Any business, regardless of its size, requires various systems and technology to run smoothly. These will vary according to the specific business, as will specific risks. As the Head of a company, you want stress kept to a minimum and productivity to a maximum, therefore, it is of the utmost importance that precautionary measures are put in place to avoid confusion, disappointment or significant losses. Nowadays, a broad range of accessible and adaptable management packages exist. Don't hesitate any longer, take the leap and begin simplifying your life today!