5 incredible (and free) apps to increase the productivity of your SME

I know from my own experience that when you are starting a business, or have few employees, the owner or manager ends up working in a 10-ring circus. This can be done as long as the business is small, with few customers and few sales. But as it grows, it becomes more and more complicated or impossible to continue doing. But what happens if even with growth you don't have the budget to hire more staff? Or you just don't want to hire more people. Next we are going to show 5 incredible (and free) apps to increase the productivity of your SME by making you more efficient.

After having 2 businesses of my own, I started working in a systems development start-up and got to know several applications that I had never heard of. I do not know if they are already better known by everyone but, from what I have seen, not so much yet. And I would like to share these apps or systems with you, hoping you can take advantage of them and be more effective in your SME. 5 incredible apps for your SME

These apps are:

• CANVA - Design – https://www.canva.com/

CANVA is a simplified graphic design tools software that helps you learn how to create any type of design. With it you can create incredible designs and as a team. With Canva's design tools and predesigned templates, it's super easy to create, print, and share.

I explain it as an Illustrator or Photoshop for mortals. In it you can choose a specific template of what you need. From post templates for social networks and videos, to presentations and flyers. It is very simple to use, easier than PowerPoint, in my opinion. But with some very good designs to make your project look professional.

It includes:

• • More than 250,000 free templates
• • More than 100 types of design
• • Hundreds of thousands of free photos and graphics
• • Collaborate and comment in real time
• • 5 GB of cloud storage
• • Invite team members

• PUBLER - Social networks – https://publer.io/

With PUBLER you can collaborate, schedule, publish and analyze your publications on various networks. It allows you to publish on: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google My Business. You can post based on a posting schedule. Easily create, upload and schedule in bulk, including recurring posts. You can also automatically add your signature and logo to promote brand recognition.

If you have one or two brands on various social networks, this is the application to manage them. Just create the image (in Canva) that you want to share, the copy, upload it to Publer and schedule where you want to publish it and when you want it to appear. We schedule everything from a month before, which brings us assurance that the following month we will publish everything planned, without being constantly worried and pressured.

It includes:

• • 1 Publer account
• • 5 social accounts
• • 50 pending posts scheduled
• • 25 saved drafts
• • 24 hours of post history

• SMART RECRUITERS - Recruitment -https://www.smartrecruiters.com/

SMART RECRUITERS is an ATS (Candidate Tracking System) that increases recruiter productivity, fosters collaboration, and enhances the experience. It helps in streamlining the follow-up and selection of candidates, improving quality and standardizing the criteria and processes for interview evaluation. In addition to accelerating the speed of recruitment.

In our company we have 6 internship vacancies that we renew every semester. On average we interview 5 people per vacancy. Which gives us 60 interviews a year, just from these practitioners. So we looked for a system that would support us in this and we found Smart Recruiters. This application helps you to better control each vacancy, and within these, manage each interview. Give each interested party comments, upload their CV, schedule interviews, send emails from here and all this working as a team with the other people in your company.

It includes:

• • Up to 10 vacancies
• • Evaluation management
• • Candidate tracking
• • Interview management
• • Interview scheduling
• • Workflow management

• ODOO - CRM - https://www.odoo.com/

First we are going to talk about what a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is or Customer Relations Manager. It is a system focused on customer-centric business strategy. This system centralizes in a Database all company-customer interactions. It collects commercial management information by maintaining a history and allows sharing and maximizing the knowledge of a client.

ODOO's CRM schedules activities based on your sales scripts: calls, meetings, emails, and quotes. It helps you get all the information you need directly at the opportunity. Compare what your real performance has been vs your goals. It keeps you connected with your customers in real time to improve collaboration. And it supports you in getting a quick overview of what is happening on your computer.

This is a very good example of a process that generally begins with the entrepreneur or the sales manager in an SME, and this business process can be recorded in Excel or even in the memory of a person. But as the company grows it is important to keep a record of everything that has been done so that it can be followed up later or that if a new person enters, they can have access to all this information.

In fact we are official ODOO Partners, if you want more information go to this page: https://micronics.mx/erp/

It includes:

• • Free forever, 1 app.
• • Unlimited users
• • Hosting in the cloud
• • New version annually

• ASANA - Project management -https://asana.com/

ASANA is a system that works to optimize the planning of your projects. Track key information with him and keep everyone on your team informed. This is the easiest way to manage team tasks and projects. Here you can plan each step and organize all the details of your work in one place. In addition to ensuring that you meet your deadlines. You can also observe and track the work, yours and your team, from any angle.

When you have a team of several people, and even when you are only 1, it is very important to keep a detailed follow-up of all your tasks divided by project. Where you can describe what has been done, what are the next tasks to be done, deadlines, responsible, etc. And Asana is a system focused on helping you do this in a very neat and simple way.

It includes:

• • Unlimited projects
• • Unlimited tasks
• • Unlimited number of comments
• • Unlimited activity logs
• • Unlimited storage (100MB per file)
• • Unlimited messages
• • Mobile applications for iOS and Android
• • 15 users

As the title of the article says: "5 incredible (and free) apps to increase the productivity of your SME" all these applications that I mention here are free. All 5 have a limited free version, but it helps you do what I mention. Generally, they start charging you when there are more than a number of users, when you manage several brands or when you already want to use more specialized functions. But for an SME the free versions will help you a lot.

I hope this helps you to be more efficient and effective in your daily work as your business grows, either by continuing on your own or by preparing yourself so that a new employee can follow up on your work, doing it with the same quality as you.

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