3 Kinds of Software That Businesses Should Invest In

Today’s small businesses face fierce competition from each other as well as from larger corporations. Choosing the right software for your business is one of the easiest things you can do to level the playing field or even give yourself a competitive advantage.

If you aren’t using these three kinds of software, then you’re probably already falling behind. Make sure you choose smart options that will give you a strong return on your investment.

Collaboration Software

If your employees work together on a variety of projects, then you need collaboration software that will help them do the following:

• Assign tasks
• Track progress
• Communicate with each other
• Share ideas and files easily

Because many employees prefer working away from the office, try to choose software that they can use on mobile devices.

There are plenty of collaboration programs you might choose for your business. HipChat stands out as one of the best because it does the following:

• Lets workers share their computer desktops in real time
• Allows users to share files by dragging and dropping icons
• Synchronizes across multiple devices, including mobile ones
• Has a search function allowing the quick location of files, messages, and links

Accounting Software

Business success depends on a lot of things. If you don’t take control of your finances, though, little else matters. Without good accounting software, it’s often difficult to even tell whether your small business is making money.
Software developers know that all types of businesses need accounting programs, so they have developed a wide range of options.

FreshBooks consistently gets high marks from small businesses because it does the following:

• Offers an intuitive interface that doesn’t require a lot of training
• Lets you track invoices, expenses, and even time spent on projects
• Is accessible from nearly any device through a mobile app
• Can scale with your company as the company grows

There are other accounting software options, but not many of them are uniquely designed to match the needs of small businesses such as yours.

Cloud Security Software

Cloud security is quickly becoming one of the most vexing problems for today’s businesses. Even large corporations often find it difficult to protect themselves from hackers. The moment they let their guards down, someone steals private information that puts companies and their clients at risk. It’s a public relations nightmare that can take years to repair.

Large enterprises, specially, can’t afford to have a data breach due to the loss of business and reputation. Since these organizations use a lot of cloud-based software, such as Salesforce, Box, Dropbox, or Office 365, the need to protect their data in a 3rd party vendor’s cloud environment is very high..

Many companies cloud security vendors because they provide the following:

• Detect insider threats and compromised accounts
• Incorporates new data into its behavioral model to improve future threat detection
• Provide visibility into risky cloud services in use
• Enable data loss prevention across commonly used cloud services
• Use closed-loop policy enforcement

Businesses need more than just good software to achieve success, but without the right software, you’ll have a hard time keeping up with your industry competitors.