You set new goals so that you have checkpoints to head toward as your business grows. Without goals, your business will remain static, and you have a less clear idea of what you could be doing differently, especially if you are in a precarious position.
Achieving your goals is extremely difficult, however, if you attempt to do so through trial and error. Will this strategy work? No? That’s okay, you think of a different idea and try again. But the same thing happens over and over, and you aren’t sure how many attempts it will take until you discover the strategy that proves successful.
The reason for this is because you need to explore why things work the way they do. Each of the strategies you tried previously were missing something. You are just a person, though, and even though you started your business, you cannot keep an eye on every aspect of it at once. Fortunately, there are technological tools that can give you a comprehensive overview, enabling you to manage your business more effectively. Here are a few software tools to help you reach the goals you set in the upcoming year:
VendHQ
VendHQ is a robust electronic point of sale system. The cash register you have in place might have gotten you this far, but it’s time to update your POS terminal to something more advanced.
This is not advancement for the sake of offering more than what is necessary, though—all of VendHQ’s functions are practical, and you can customize them for your industry. For instance, with simple inventory management software built-in, you can optimize your inventory management techniques so that you don’t waste money on products that don’t sell or holding them in storage. Because the inventory database is connected to the POS system, it automatically subtracts products whenever a customer buys something, so you and your employees always know exactly how much stock is available at any given time (which spares you the awkwardness of saying, “I’ll go check the back” when a customer inquires).
Plus, VendHQ also produces in-depth reports regarding your sales history. You can select any timeframe you please: how did your sales last month compare to the same month a year prior? The software can then make projections and suggest realistic goals for the future while providing insight into how to achieve them.
Zoho
Zoho is an extensive software suite that helps you run every aspect of your business. It can assist with external matters—such as customer relationship management, email marketing, and sales leads—and internal ones, like accounting, human resources, IT services, workflow management, and more.
Zoho helps you manage your entire business from one platform. It can integrate with other applications and offers a variety of extensions that help you customize it for your particular business needs, making your life—and your staff’s lives—much easier.
Owler
You don’t have to make every mistake yourself—you can learn from your competitors’. While you should never copy another organization’s creative property, you can mimic the successful parts of their marketing and operational strategies. What are your competitors doing that works for them, and what are they doing that you should avoid? With Owler, you can peer into the success of millions of companies and learn how you can follow suit or differentiate yourself.
Besides looking at competitors, you can use Owler to search for new business opportunities. Perhaps there is another organization out there that would be interested in a partnership. With Owler, you can determine which companies are most likely to benefit from a relationship with you and even find leads when it comes to B2B sales.
Sprout Social
Billions of people use social media, so there’s bound to be an audience out there for you somewhere. The issue is connecting with them. How can you be sure your efforts are not wasted on people who have no interest in your business? With the robust features from Sprout Social, you can schedule posts, automate actions, generate analytics reports, and more.
When you have unprecedented insight into how well your social media campaign is performing, you can amend it according to what the data says. If you create a piece of content that provokes all kinds of positive engagement but you aren’t sure why, you can use Sprout Social to compare it to your other posts so that you know what to do again in the future.
It’s important to establish goals, but it’s equally essential to have assurance that you are headed towards them, not away. Which software options do you believe will help you set and achieve your business objectives?
