I’ve recently set myself up as a freelancer for the third time in my career history. Something I’ve noticed this time around is that setting up in business is a much more tool-rich process than it was even seven years ago (the last occasion).
When I last set up, seven years ago, there didn’t seem to be all that much to choose from in the way of business software that wasn’t either a professional-grade office software package or slightly clunky freeware with usability way down its list of priorities.
Now though, there’s a wide – and potentially bewildering – array of software options on offer. Whatever business process, system or application you can think of, I can guarantee that there are going to be several software options – most of them cloud-based, rather than desktop-clients – to choose from.
After a few weeks of on-and-off research, there there are a few software packages or cloud apps that I’m either settling in to use long-term or currently trialling. The aim is to provide support and productivity improvement in the following areas of my business:
- Email, Calendar, File Storage and Sharing
- CRM
- Finances & Invoicing
- Task Management
- Virtual Networking
- Business Development
I’ll cover the first three elements briefly here, but task management, virtual networking and business development are clearly much larger areas, so I’ll talk about each of those areas in separate posts.
Continue reading ‘Setting Up in Business? There’s an App for That…’
