Modern app development has advanced massively in-line with the overall growth of the wider technology industry. Business to business (B2B) companies have benefited greatly from the introduction of apps. Whether it’s organisation tools or communication outlets, there’s an app for everything it seems and this helps businesses run more smoothly and efficiently.
But which B2B apps have been the most ground-breaking for businesses? In this post, we’ve handpicked six of our favourites that we feel would benefit your company and help you successfully achieve your overall goals.
We’ll cover:
Slack
Communication is one of the main pillars that business success is built upon. Without it, people are left confused and not on the same wavelength. This results in departments and teams pulling in different directions, which is counterproductive when they’re all trying to achieve the same goal.
Without communication, things can get missed and time can be wasted completing tasks that have already been done by another team member. Also, teams can be briefed into tasks incorrectly, which can have a knock-on effect on their whole business operations. Mis-communication can cost businesses lots of money. FACT.
Image Credit: Slack
It’s not just an issue from a business side of things either too. Culturally, if communication isn’t great within the team, it’s likely that morale and motivation will be low. People like to be kept up to date with wider company issues and keep track of the progress of projects, so to be left in the dark can leave them feeling demotivated and devalued as a team member.
Slack is a great way to solve your communication issues. It’s an instant messaging platform that means you can reach individual team members directly or create group channels to address more than one person. It notifies them instantly which is more effective than other channels, such as emails, which can sometimes be too formal for a small problem or get lost in a pile of others.
Ensuring that your communication levels are as high as possible is a necessity for businesses to reach their maximum potential. If everybody is on the same page, they can then work more efficiently toward the same objectives together. Plus, collaboration and morale between employees will be at a high too.
Trello
Trello is one of the most popular organisational tools for businesses. It solves one of the biggest problems when working on larger projects and that’s accurate progress updates. Plus, it also works wonders for overall organisation - and you can never be too organised as a business, can you?
It gives team members the chance to look at their colleagues’ schedules without having to physically be with them. This comes in handy when trying to organise meetings, calls and collaborative work. Plus, it allows you to see whether your workforce is working at their full capacity and can help even the workload so that the pressure is eased on individuals.
Image Credit: Trello
It details a transparent and clear action plan of how each team member is contributing to projects and overall goals. This is great when working with clients, as account managers can give accurate updates of where their work is at and pinpoint an exact deadline of when they can expect to see it. Organisation and transparency are key factors in ensuring that deadlines are always met and clients are constantly delighted.
Without this clear structure, it can be difficult to see where overall projects are at - especially if there are a lot of contributors working on it. Gone are the days of going round the team and asking each individual for an update, you can simply click through the easy to navigate platform and gain access to all the information that you need.
1Password
Businesses will often use various B2B apps or have many accounts that contain confidential and sensitive information. So, these folders will be protected by a security password. The problem is when you have too many passwords you risk losing access or even being hacked.
For security reasons, each password should be different. That way, if one does, unfortunately, fall into the wrong hands, you don’t risk losing everything by having the same password for each system. But where do you store all these passwords? Definitely not in a notebook, the old fashioned way. That’s a huge no-no! Should you lose the notebook, you’re then in a troubled situation and will need to reset each password.
Image Credit: 1Password
So, to save time, increase security and improve your overall organisation, investing in a password vault B2B app is the way forward. Each password that is entered is protected by one master password and is an entirely safe way to store all the logins that you use. Even those that you haven’t used for years, you never know when they might come in handy.
Plus, not only do they store your passwords, but they have tools that help you generate new, hard to predict ones too. So, say goodbye to your first pet’s name passwords and hello to a lot stronger codes.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the best tools available for social media management. So often we see businesses are overspending on their social campaigns. Well, we think this is down to a serious lack of organisation and account management. Hootsuite outlines all your campaigns and gives you visibility of the spend on these accounts. So, you can monitor how close you are to going over budget and allocate it more critically.
Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple social media streams in one place. Social media best practice is to have a presence on various channels, so managing them all separately can prove trickier the more accounts that you have. You need to make sure that the messaging is consistent and fit for the different audiences that each channel has.
Image Credit: Hootsuite
Scheduling posts in advance is a great way for your business to become more time-efficient. Writing posts as and when they need to be released can take up too much time. Whereas, if you have them all ready to be automatically sent, your workforce becomes a lot more flexible. Plus, you are less likely to miss deadlines and forget to send out posts when scheduling.
The analytics tool within the platform gives you the opportunity to see the performance of each campaign that you run. Without knowing how successful your campaigns are, how do you know what works and what doesn’t? Analytics allow you to make smarter decisions about the directions that your social media take and help form your ongoing strategy.
HubSpot
HubSpot is an inbound marketing and automation software that allows businesses to manage, carry out and analyse their multi-channel efforts all in one place. Essentially, HubSpot houses everything that you need to run a successful marketing campaign, in an all in one user-friendly platform. There’s a reason that it’s continuing to dominate the B2B apps market year after year.
The first benefit of using HubSpot is that everything is all in one place, which makes managing marketing campaigns so much easier. Social media, blogging and lead nurturing are just some of the areas that can be managed within HubSpot. If your different channels can all be viewed in one place, it allows for complete visibility across the campaign. This is much more convenient than having to check up on each different team within your department.
Image Credit: G2
It’s incredibly easy to use too. From the blogging tool to email creation, you’ll be guided throughout with handy tips from HubSpot themselves. Plus, should you come across any issues that you can’t solve, their support team are always on hand to help you out - whether that be on live chat or phone call.
Hubspot’s analytical tool is second to none. If you need to see how a certain blog is performing or the number of link clicks that a social post has, you can do it within the platform. There are so many metrics that you can access within the platform, it all depends on how technical you want to get. Data helps shape your future campaigns and indicates to you what methods of marketing are the most effective for your business.
G Suite
G Suite is the perfect array of tools for all your collaboration needs. B2B businesses require various people to be working on the same job at one time, which is why you need to have everything in place to be able to work together as efficiently as possible.
One of the main benefits of G Suite is that a lot of the tools will already be familiar to your workforce. A lot of people use Gmail as their personal email inbox and Google Docs for creating articles, so they won’t need much training or time to adapt to new platforms. It’s simple to use, so you won’t need to invest a lot of money in employee training time.
Image Credit: The Next Web
Google Drive allows you to save all of your work in one shared workspace. This is essential when working on a large project, so that you know where to find everything should somebody be out of the office and not able to tell you where it is. Plus, it allows you to see where each project is up to and what tasks still need to be completed.
It’s compatible on all devices too. So, your employees can work when they’re not in the office. We’re not saying that they should be sitting on the sofa on a Saturday night checking their emails, but if they need to work remotely they won’t be limited to what they can access. They’ll be able to work as effectively out of the office as they would if they were in work, providing there are no distractions at home, that is.
Grow your SaaS business with B2B apps
One of the most effective ways to grow your SaaS business is to ensure that the relationship between sales and marketing is as good as it can be. This all boils down to communication and collaboration. So, to make sure that you give yourself the best chance of growing effectively, you should make a conscious effort to put all the right tools and B2B apps in place.
Obviously, this isn’t the only way that you can grow your business. Luckily for you, we’ve created a free guide that outlines the best practices of efficiently expanding your business. Grab your copy below.
