Small Business Owners Name Favorite Apps, Tech Tools
A new survey lends insight into which apps are most beneficial to small business owners.
Life in the 21st century means constantly being bombarded with new apps, websites, and software that claim they’ll make your life or business run more smoothly. The only question is: Which ones work?
If you’re a business owner, you’ve now got some answers. SurePayroll just released its Small Business Scorecard for 2016, in which the payroll company asked business owners to rank a variety of tech tools. The winners? Google Drive was the big winner. It was chosen as the favorite cloud storage app and the favorite organization app. When it comes to social media, Facebook is king, the survey found.
“Small businesses with only a few employees are typically not going to have a lot of resources for extensive technology systems,” said Andy Roe, general manager of
SurePayroll. “Fortunately, there are some really beneficial, low-cost tools available.”
The winners in all six categories were:
• Cloud Storage: Google Drive
• Email Marketing: Mail Chimp
• Organization App: Google Drive
• Social Network: Facebook
• Social Media Management: Hootsuite
• Customer Relationship Management: Salesforce
The list had a few changes from last year. For instance, Google Drive displaced Dropbox in the cloud storage category, and Mail Chimp overtook Constant Contact for email marketing.
Roe said many small business owners rely on a few key apps and services, in part to keep costs down.
“Our average customer tells us, for example, that they use Mail Chimp to communicate with customers, Google Drive to store and import documents, and SurePayroll to pay their employees,” said Roe. “Those are the building blocks and beyond that upgrading technology becomes costly.”
Also, the list made clear that when it comes to social networks, size doesn’t always matter. After Facebook, LinkedIn was named the second-favorite social network for small business, even though the network is much smaller than Twitter (which was ranked No. 4) and Instagram (which came in at No. 5) in terms of active users. Google Plus, despite being maligned for its failure to compete with other social networks, was the third-favorite social network among the small business owners surveyed.
