When you own a small business, you wear so many hats that you can’t see straight most days. The amount of responsibilities seems endless. With handling all of the marketing, accounting, payroll, inventory, scheduling, customer service and ordering, among other things, it can be difficult to manage it all. Below are three must-have technologies that will make running your business much easier.
Hootsuite is a tool that allows you to manage multiple social media platforms from a single dashboard. You can view and post to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and others all from one place, even simultaneously. There is even a free version that allows you to manage up to three sites. As an added bonus, each week they send an email that contains your analytics and click summaries for all sites.
Cloud Storage
Many small businesses don’t have servers; therefore, important information is often stored on the desktop of a computer or its hard drive. This becomes a major risk with power surges, end of life technology, malware and other factors. With cloud storage services like ShareSync and OneDrive, you can save files and folders in the cloud and access them from literally anywhere. They also allow you to share access to those documents with others if you choose to do so. For your convenience, there are apps available for accessing your files and folders from cell phones and tablets when you are on the go.
Firewall
When posed with the question, “Does my business need a firewall?” the answer is without a doubt, “Yes”. Not only should you have a firewall, but you must make sure it is regularly updated, monitored and maintained. A firewall is a piece of hardware loaded with software that monitors traffic and helps filter out viruses and hackers from entering your network. If you take credit cards on an Internet connection or store customer or personal data on your network, this becomes undeniably important.
Sometimes our network threats also come from inside our business. Online gaming and shopping, emails with questionable links and social media sites can expose your network to viruses and other outside threats. It can be costly and time consuming to recover from a cyber-attack, so make sure you are covered with a firewall. Consider it an insurance policy.
