Essential Tools to Boost Expansion & Profitability of Your Business

Running a small business in Nigeria is no mean feat. Outside political and economic challenges, businesses have inherent challenges that threaten survival and profitability. This guide covers essential tools that can be implemented to boost expansion and drive profitability in your small business. These are free or paid digital tools that enable you to work smarter, not harder.

Emerging business technologies enhance employee efficiency, facilitate collaboration and communication, and increase staff productivity and performance. While the digital tools highlighted in this guide prioritize and optimize teamwork, they also ensure quick service delivery. These essential tools also make remote work seamless and easy to manage online and offline.

The essential business tools recommended for your small business in this guide cover categories such as:

• Document sharing
• Work collaboration and project management
• Team communication
• Accounting and human resources
• Sales and marketing
• Customer relationship management (CRM)

Factors that determined listing these essential tools

This suite of business and management tools has been included in this guide for several reasons. Some of the important parameters used to justify their inclusion in this list are:

• Inbuilt features
• User interface
• Ease of use and training resources
• Pricing models
• Scalability and security
• Customers reviews

List of essential tools you must integrate into your business operations

This is not an exclusive list – in fact, there are more than 10,000 digital tools that can serve your business needs in one capacity or the other. But the 21 tools listed here are representative of many of these products, and they have been curated to save you the time and stress involved with reviewing thousands of similar and often confusing business tools.

So here we go:

1. Staff communication tools

Staff or team communication tools make it easy for your workforce to communicate in real-time. Employees can chat whether they are in the same location or not, and their work-related conversations can drive deeper engagement and job collaborations. Here are some tools to consider:

• Flock – for team messaging

Flock is a small business software that is designed for team communication. It comes with all the communication features that can be used for team communication across several platforms. This business software is designed for video conferencing, file sharing, custom mailing lists, company directories, and group messaging among others. It is a messaging software that has a free version and a paid version.

• Zoom

Whether you are physically available to do business with clients or not, Zoom makes it possible for you to stay in touch with clients and employees. A video conferencing platform designed for video communications with up to 1,000 people at the same time, Zoom is indispensable to your business if you want to be in constant touch.

Zoom has unique features such as screen sharing, whiteboarding, transcripts, in-meeting chat, meeting recording, and file sharing among others. Everyone can use the free version of Zoom with as many as 100 people for a video meeting lasting 40 minutes, but the paid version is suitable for businesses that want to hold conferences with up to 1,000 participants simultaneously.

• Slack

If you are looking for a communication tool that can be used for instant messages, audio and video calls, sharing files, and team collaboration, then you must consider Slack. Employees can sign into Slack to discuss business projects and collaborate on ongoing tasks with ease. It has all the features needed to communicate and get everyone on the same page regarding specific projects.

Slack has free and paid versions.

2. Document sharing tools

If you run a growing business in Nigeria, you need document-sharing tools to boost productivity and employee efficiency. These tools are software that store documents and files in the cloud, making it possible for users to access them on all connected devices. Employees with the necessary access can access these online files and make necessary changes for the benefit of everyone collaborating on the files. Below are some file-sharing tools to use:

• Google Drive

You can use Google Drive to store and share work files with your employees if you use Gmail. It is a file-sharing platform with cloud storage that anyone with necessary access can use to create or edit documents, images, spreadsheets, and slide presentations simultaneously. It is basically free for all users, but you can upgrade to the paid versions if you want more cloud storage.

As a Nigerian business owner, you can give your employees and clients access to a Google Drive document to collaborate on a given project.

• Dropbox

Similar to Google Drive, Dropbox is a “smart workspace where teams, tools, and content come together.” It is a secure cloud storage platform that is suitable for large files and collaborative projects. For instance, a team of software developers or web designers across different countries can work simultaneously on a single project hosted on Dropbox.

If you have various employees across various locations who must work on a single file, you can take advantage of Dropbox for this purpose. The platform has watermarking, file recovery, and tiered-admin roles among other add-ons. It is a paid service with different payment plans.

3. Work collaboration and project management

Work and project collaboration tools are designed to boost productivity and efficiency among employees. It also makes it easy for several employees or business associates to work on the same projects at the same time, regardless of location. It also makes it easy for supervisors and management to monitor the performance of workers across various projects. Here are some tools to consider:

• Loom

If you travel abroad and need to explain something on your computer or smartphone screen to someone back home, you can use Loom to achieve this. Loom is a digital software that is designed for the recording of your screen while making voice tutorials. You can demonstrate something on your screen and make a recording of it to share with employees.

If your small business involves making explainer videos or video tutorials, you will find Loom essential to your endeavours. While several users can use a link to access a live video tutorial, Loom makes it possible to use emoji reactions and time-stamped comments. It is free to use, and there is a paid version.

• Asana

Asana is a project management tool that can be used to schedule, track, and manage teamwork. It can be used to bring several team members to the same project page through synced collaboration. It is also usable to track communication and plan to-do lists. This is one project management tool that makes work easier for the workforce within an organization.

• Calendly

If you must schedule appointments and business meetings among company staff, Calendly might be the perfect tool to use. Calendly is designed to make business appointments and conferences easy to schedule – in fact, it is a scheduling tool. This online scheduler can automatically send reminders to targeted meeting participants, make follow-ups, and provide links for rescheduling.

Instead of picking up the phone to schedule meetings or initiate reminders, use Calendly to achieve your plan. With a simple user interface and support for mobile or desktop users, Calendly automates business meetings based on participants’ availability and can be integrated with video conferencing apps, payment platforms, and other productivity software.

• Google Workspace

Google Workspace is a collaboration and productivity tool that anyone within an organization can access for seamless use. Developed by Google, various parties such as employees, suppliers, customers, and associates can connect or collaborate on projects using Google Workspace. Key users can track data and important work analytics on the platform for better business decisions.

• Time Doctor

If you hire remote freelancers and need to track their job activities, Time Doctor is a useful tool to consider. You can also use the software to monitor what your employees do behind you when they are working at their computers. This tool enables employers to monitor what their staff or hired freelancers are doing at every point in time.

The software automatically captures the screen of the user at regular intervals to alert the employer to what employees are doing. It also tracks the time spent by any worker on given projects to show if they are working or not at particular periods. It can also do a video recording of the user’s screen and activity levels, while also able to send popup alerts when users become idle at their work computers.

4. Sales and marketing tools

Businesses need customer support tools and marketing software to optimize sales efforts. Highlighted tools in this category will cover customer service, payment and invoicing, and email marketing among others. Below are some of our picks:

• Mailchimp

There are several email marketing automation systems out there, but Mailchimp is simply one of the best. This is one intuitive email marketing software that enables you to send emails that convert to potential and existing customers. Integrated with AI to create and deliver personalized emails to your target audience, Mailchimp delivers mass emails to thousands of recipients simultaneously without issues.

This email automation tool also provides analytical insights into customers’ behaviours, interactions with messages, and other factors that guarantee improved sales and revenue.

• Sprout Social

A growing business should have a physical and online presence. It is not enough to have a website; you must also have social media profiles that tell your story. Customers would like to interact with your business on Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Pinterest among others.

Sprout Social is a business tool that makes it easy to schedule social media posts and track user engagement. The tool provides a centralized platform where you can interact and monitor all activities on your social media channels from a single dashboard. With this tool, you can create and schedule as well as share social media posts simultaneously across your social channels. And you can also monitor engagements with your posts through integrated analytics.

• Google Analytics

As a competent business owner, it is believed that you have a website that supports your business operations. With Google Analytics, you can make informed business decisions based on how customers interact with your website across various devices. The tool helps you to gain deep customer insights as well as track the performance of your adverts on your website or across the internet.

Google Analytics gives you insights into customer behaviour, their location, their ages, and activities across your website. You even know the length of time they spend on your website and the pages or products they interact with. This knowledge enables you to understand the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and other key ROI initiatives.

• ZenDesk

If you run a business where you speak to lots of customers on a daily basis, then you need ZenDesk. This business tool helps you to track and monitor customers’ complaints much more easily. For better customer service, the software helps you with enhanced ticket management where each customer query is assigned a ticket for easier tracking and resolution.

ZenDesk is a CRM tool that generates insightful data into customers’ engagement with your products. It also enables you to attend to their concerns and queries in a timely fashion that others within the team can pick up on.

• Interswitch

What is the relevance of a business if your customers are not able to pay you? You need a seamless way to get paid by your customers. Just as business owners in the US use Stripe and PayPal to facilitate business payments, you can use Interswitch, Paystack, and Flutterwave among others to facilitate payments in Nigeria.

With these payment gateways, customers can use their smartphones and bank ATMs to pay for goods and services. This will boost your business revenue since anyone can make payments from any part of Nigeria at any time. Integrate a suitable digital payment solution into your business and sit back to watch your enterprise scale.

Conclusion

To succeed in business in Nigeria, you must implement a host of digital tools to scale your business exponentially. These tools cover accounting, HR, communication, technology, productivity, marketing, social media, and content creation among others. Most of these tools are automated to maximize their functions, so they work perfectly to scale your operations once they are installed.