JuliannaThe World Wide Web is leveling the playing field for many small businesses. There are many free online resources that allow your small business to test the kinds of e-business concepts and strategies that Big Business has been using for years. Check out the following tools to convert your documents into PDFs, fine-tune your customer service, set-up an e-newsletter, keep your projects on track, and join the blogging craze.
PrimoPDF
While Adobe’s PDF (portable document format) reader is available for free to anyone that wants to view and print the PDF files that they receive by e-mail or download from the web, this software does not give you the ability to create PDFs.
Contrary to what most people think, you don’t need Adobe Acrobat software to create PDFs. There are a number of free PDF converters available online. PrimoPDF allows you to convert to PDF from any application by simply ‘printing’ to the PrimoPDF printer. Within minutes, you can create high-quality PDFs by converting from Word, Excel, PowerPoint and virtually any other printable file type. The PDF format is a more user-friendly format for those of you who send documents to partners and clients electronically.
www.primopdf.com
Salesforce.com
CRM or Customer Relationship Management is a hot-topic in today’s business world. So what does it mean? According to Wikipedia, “the generally accepted purpose of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is to enable organizations to better serve their customers through the introduction of reliable processes and procedures”. CRM practices encompass methodologies, software and Internet applications created to help businesses manage customer relationships in an systematic way; it covers all points of interaction – sales, marketing and customer service.
Salesforce.com offers a customer relationship management (CRM) product that is popular with larger enterprises. What many small businesses don’t know is that there is a personal edition available for free on their website. If you’re a small business and wonder if your business could benefit from CRM, sign up for this personal version, as it should provide enough information for you to decide whether you want to upgrade to the full-featured version in the future. Since it’s web-based, it’s available to you outside the office on any Internet-enabled computer and will allow you to manage your contacts, tasks and calendar remotely.
www.salesforce.com/products/personal.jsp
Constant Contact
There are many benefits to having an e-mail newsletter for your small business; for starters, it enables you to interact with you customers on a regular basis, communicate news about your industry and business, market products in an informational, non-threatening manner and canvass your clientele. For most small businesses, it’s important to have a professional looking, quality publication; however, the cost of outsourcing a monthly e-newsletters of this type can be prohibitive. The most viable and cost effective option for small businesses is to keep your e-newsletter production in-house, as long as you or your staff can manage it.
While are countless web-based e-mail marketing services available these days on the Net that eliminate the need for a developer and technical-know how, Constant Contact seems to be incredibility popular with do-it-yourselfers. Their solution is designed to be affordable for small businesses as monthly fees are based on the number of subscribers on your list. Check out their 60-day free trial. If at the end of the trial period you have 50 or fewer subscribers, the service remains free indefinitely.
www.constantcontact.com
Basecamp
Is your business looking for a smarter, easier way to keep your clients, co-workers, and projects on track? Check out Basecamp! It’s rare to hear IT and Communications professionals lavish praise on a project management tool, but Basecamp has turned many of our colleagues into walking testimonials.
Playfully called “the iPod of project management,” Basecamp is a low-cost web-based tool that lets you manage projects or simply ideas and quickly create client/project extranets. It lets you and your clients – or just your own internal team – keep your conversations, ideas, schedules, and to-do lists in a password-protected central location. Unlike most project management tools, Basecamp is exceptionally user-friendly and affordable. If you want to test it out, they have a free version to get started that allows you to manage one project online. If you’re a project management superstar, you can manage unlimited projects for US$99 per month.
www.basecamphq.com
Blogger.com
It seems everyone is joining the blogosphere and business weblogs are becoming more prevalent as businesses see how easy it can be to connect with an audience and position yourself as an expert in your field. A business blog can be a complement to your website and e-mail newsletters. The beauty of a blog is that it allows you to communicate information to your audience as things happen, doing away with the usual reliance on a web designer to maintain and update your online content. Archived dialogues on topics become valuable resources for your audience.
Want to join the blogosphere for free and see if it is right for your business? Visit Blogger.com and set up your own blog in less than ten minutes. You can then integrate a ‘blog’ menu into your existing website – for example www.mywebsite.com/blog – and forward it to your free blogger weblog. This is a good way to find out if blogging fits your business website and customer communication strategy.
www.blogger.com
As a final note, it’s important to keep in mind that any e-business tool should only be adopted if it makes sense for your particular business. Assess your business needs and budget and implement only strategies that meet your corporate objectives. We hope you find some of these tools valuable!