How to Choose the Right Technology to Manage Your Small Business

Building a tech stack for your small business will not only help you better manage your organization, it will also help you streamline your processes and keep your business functioning in a balanced and sustainable way. Your tech stack can also help you manage team members as well as clients, supporting you in creating a stellar experience for those who are involved in your business. There are countless tech options out there for small business owners to choose from, which can be overwhelming. Small business owners can wind up choosing the wrong tech for the type of business they are running, choose tech that they don’t even need, or choose tech that is too complicated for them to actually use consistently. Within this article, I am going to share with you my top recommendations for technology to use to manage your small business. As well, I will share with you some of the best options out there and ways you can choose the right technology for your business. Let’s dive in!

What is a tech stack?

Tech stacks are made up of the technology, software or programs you use in your business that keep your operations running. Your tech stack consists of items that, if taken away, would cause a disruption in how your business runs. Without a tech stack, you may catch yourself manually operating and running things which can cause wasted time and headaches. Tech stacks support business owners in streamlining their processes and overall business operations.

There are a handful of common technologies that almost every business operates with and they are:

• A project management tool

• A CRM tool

• An email automation tool

• Analytics tools

• Lead generation tools

• Financial tracking tool

• Content management tool

• Marketing management tool

• An operations management tool

Though there are so many different technologies that we can potentially use to help us manage our business, the good news is that there are some softwares and programs available to use that serve multiple purposes. One of the biggest mistakes I made as a newer business owner was thinking I needed a separate technology for each area of my business I was wanting to manage. We have many departments in our businesses, from operations and admin to sales, HR and marketing and more.

The thing to understand here is that you do not by any means have to use a different software for each business department. The key is building a tech stack that is easy to use and serves many different purposes. This is going to help you be able to keep up with your tech stacks far more than using a million different softwares that all serve different purposes will. Your tech stack should help you manage the most important parts of your organization and the tech you choose should become software that simplifies your life as a business owner. If a software feels too complicated to consistently use, chances are that technology is not the right fit for you.

Review what activities you want to automate

When beginning to choose what tech is best for you to use to help you manage your business, start by considering what activities you want to automate. There are many softwares available to use that can help us automate our workflows. To discover what activities you want to automate, first make a list of the activities you do on a regular basis. Next, rate how much time it takes you to perform each of those activities and whether there is a smarter way to go about that activity that could save you time. I like to look into what activities I am repeating over and over again manually, gauging where I could establish a more streamlined workflow that incorporates a software that helps me automate the process. This is where we begin to work smarter, not harder, by implementing softwares that can help up tighten up our processes!

Here are some of my favorite things to automate:

• Email marketing sequences

• Content marketing publishing

• Financial department

• Sales department

• Client workflows

Now that you have identified the areas of your business that can be automated, the next step is considering what softwares are available to help you manage those areas. This is the part where it is important to not only begin researching technologies, but to consider what technologies can potentially do multiple things. For example, some technology is built to allow you to automate and streamline many things, where as other technologies are specialized to just help you automate one thing. I use Quickbooks to help me manage and automate the tracking of my financial department. Quickbooks also has the ability to automate payments for clients, including invoicing, which can help me double dip by managing both my financial department and my sales department. This way, I do not have to invest in multiple softwares when I can, instead, just go with one software that does several things I need.

As well, there are many platforms that offer built-in automations that can help you streamline your processes. I use Pinterest regularly to market my Studio business. Pinterest has a built in content publishing feature that allows me to pre-schedule and automate my content publishing directly on the platform. I also have used Planoly in the past as that software allows you to pre-schedule and automate content for several platforms, such as Pinterest and Instagram.

The key to deciding your software for automation is to study what the technology can do for you and consider how the tech can work for you in multiple ways.

Client Management Tech

When it comes to managing your clients, choosing the software you use becomes incredibly important because it directly impacts the experience your clients and customers have with you. Adopting a CRM into your tech stack is one of the most helpful things you can do as a small business owner.

Here are some recommendations for CRM tech to look into:

• HubSpot

• Notion

• Dubsado

• Clickup

• Pipedrive

• Zoho

Social media marketing tech

If you’re a small business, chances are you are using social media to help you market your business and develop your brand presence. We all know that social media can become incredibly time consuming, so adopting tech to help you automate and streamline your processes can give you back a lot of time.

Here are some recommendations for social media management tech:

• Planoly

• Hootsuite

• Buffer

• CoSchedule

Business and project management tech

My favorite part of my tech stack is the business and project management area. This is because this part of my tech stack quite literally keeps me on task, helps me be more production, and supports me in staying very organized. I manage a lot of people, from clients to freelancers. I also have my hands in a lot of projects at one time. A question I get asked all the time is “How do you do all that you do?” and the answer is in the business and project management tech I use!

Here are some recommendations for tech that can help you manage your business and projects:

• Notion

• Asana

• Trello

• Clickup

• Slack

• Microsoft teams

• Zoom and/or Loom

Marketing management tech

The last recommendation I have resides in the realm of marketing tech. Chances are your marketing distribution plan has you sharing content on many different platforms. This can get confusing and overwhelming without a solid marketing management system in place. Personally, I use Notion as my top technology I work with on a daily basis because it serves many different business management purposes for me. My Notion workspace has a custom built out marketing department that supports me in managing every aspect of my marketing and content creation. There are various components to our marketing departments that we need to consider when choosing our tech stack, and your first step is to identify what ways you are marketing your business. This will help you clarify what platforms, marketing styles, and areas you are investing your time into to market. Once you identify your various marketing avenues, then you can decide on what softwares to use to help you automate and streamline.

Here are some recommendations for marketing tech:

• Flodesk for email marketing

• Sprout social for social media management

• Hubspot for marketing automation

• Active Campaign for customer experience management

• Google Analytics for tracking traffic

• Website hosting platform for tracking traffic

• Canva for content creation

• Adobe suite for custom content design

• Semrush for SEO management

Why I use Notion as my number 1 tech choice

I want to conclude by leaving a quick note as to why I use Notion for the bulk of my tech stack needs. Notion allows you to do many things all in one space. This has been an absolute game changer for me, as I was getting incredibly burnt out trying to manage many technologies that all served different purposes. With Notion, I can plan, develop, and manage just about every department of my business. Though I use additional technologies for various parts of my business, such as marketing platforms and financial management platforms, with Notion’s awesome integrations I can still sync and store everything in one place. Rather than having to bounce to many different platforms, I can house data and workflows all in Notion. I have found that this has helped keep my systems and workflows so much cleaner and well managed!

I hope this article has helped you consider how you can adopt a tech stack for your small business that supports you in working smarter, not harder!

Until next time…

Natalie Brite