Starting up a company and running it to profitability is not for everyone. If you are one of those brave souls that have dared to venture into the world to commercialize your idea, the last thing you want to do is worry about how to run your office. Today, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of business software applications pitching for your business. The choices that you make for your company’s software determine, to a great extent, how efficient your internal operations are. As a matter of fact, such tools will allow you to weather difficulties and maintain overall productivity when your staff can only work remotely for any reason. This article highlights three such essential applications for businesses to streamline their paperwork, external communication, and other aspects of day-to-day operations, and make themselves flexible enough to deal with such calamities like COVID-19.
#1: PDFelement 7 Pro for Document Management
Document workflows are like the major arteries of any business, regardless of whether it’s digitizing hard copy bills and vouchers, creating and signing contracts, editing and marking up marketing content, handling a myriad of forms, scanning physical documents to PDF, or simply having a tool that can quickly convert documents to and from PDF. PDFelement 7 Pro offers a full range of such features that can greatly increase the productivity of your document workflows and the efficiency of your office operations. In the event of a situation where your employees are forced to do remote work because they can’t make the commute due to a health threat, such as what’s happening around the world, the cloud-ready PDFelement 7 Pro will allow them to continue to be productive from the safety of their homes.
Here are some of the things PDFelement 7 Pro can do for your startup:
- Provide a PDF editing platform to make changes in static documents
- Digitize paper-based processes using OCR technology
- Create PDFs from various other file formats, and convert PDF to edit-friendly formats like Excel and HTML
- Make it easy to fill forms and digitally sign documents so they’re legally binding
- Streamline your documentation with cloud integration
- Give you commenting and review tools for marking up PDF content
- Create interactive forms, convert non-editable forms to fillable PDFs
- Protect sensitive PDF documents with password security, restrictions, and redaction tools
- Heavy-duty batch processes for enhanced productivity and efficiency
- Generate industry-compliant PDF/A files for archiving data
- Share PDF content from within the software
- Printer-friendly interface
These features will not only help you organize your documentation and paper-based processes but also give your staff the tools they need to be more efficient and productive. If you have remote workers on your payroll or your staff can’t get to work because of an Act of God event like COVID-19, they’ll still have access to cloud-stored documents on their PDFelement 7 Pro mobile apps for iOS and Android. And with a registered account, they also get access to HiPDF, a fully online PDF editor that replicates all the functions of the desktop application.
Moreover, a subscription to the Pro version of PDFelement 7 costs less than $10 a user per month or $129 as a one-time fee for a perpetual license. No need to spend hundreds of dollars on buying a copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC when you have everything you need in PDFelement 7 Pro. Here is a limited-time offer on PDFelement 7, get it now.
#2: Office 365 or G Suite for Communication and Collaboration
Depending on whether you’re comfortable with Google’s cloud-based productivity suite or you want to stick with familiar Microsoft applications, have at least one of these subscriptions active for your staff. The cost per user is quite nominal but you get a host of applications and services that are easily manageable through a dashboard-style interface.
Here are some of the things you get with these cloud-hosted business tools:
- Cloud storage
- Applications for word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, online forms, etc.
- Business emails
- Syncable and shareable calendars
- Video conferencing and messaging software
- Collaborative environment for document workflows
- Admin tools to manage resources and user/device permissions
- Website builder
- Automation scripts for apps
These tools are important for any business, and to top it off, Office 365 and G Suite also make managing users, tracking workflows, and monthly billing a lot easier. In addition, both are scalable to any size so your tools grow as your business grows and you always have a handle on how much it’s costing you.
#3: Zapier for Workflow Automation
Whether you deal with digital products and services or the physical kind, any business that wants to survive today needs to be proactive as well as responsive to its customers and potential clients. Workflow automation will trigger cross-platform actions automatically so human input is only required to monitor the process to make sure it’s working right. Using something like Zapier will allow you to connect various pairs of applications so that an action in one will set off a different action in another. For example, if you link WordPress to your Facebook account, any new post on your blog can be set to trigger a post on Facebook. There are literally thousands upon thousands of combinations that you can use to make your workflows more automated and less human-intensive.
The tools listed above are affordable, user-friendly, and easy to deploy for small and large organizations alike. The best part is that scaling them up as your startup gets bigger is a piece of cake. They’ll bring a sense of continuity as your revenue increases and your staffing needs grow. These tools have numerous training resources as well, which means the learning curve won’t be steep for new employees as and when you hire them. In every sense, using these applications for your startup business gives you a technology advantage that will eventually translate into healthier sales growth, higher office productivity, and a highly efficient team of employees that have the best tools for their work.
Software stock photo by ZoranOrcik/Shutterstock
