Businesses right across America are looking to ride the wave of deregulation that is coming out of the White House. With the new President intent on delivering a “revved up economy” – and prepared to take a blow torch to red tape to deliver on that bold pledge – businesses need to be in the best place possible to take advantage. You need to make different financial decisions, and you need the right financial tools to help you.
That can mean many things – from eyeing up expansion opportunities to marketing campaigns and launching new products and services on top of your existing offering. But one thing it has to mean – to paraphrase a campaign manager for a previous President – is that you have a think “about the money, stupid”. If you don’t have a handle on the figures in front of you then growth is going to be pretty tough to achieve.
Luckily, that’s where financial tools come in. There are plenty out there that can give you a more accurate picture of the state of your finances, help you to analyze your competitors and create accurate forecasts so that you can make sound financial decisions. The best financial tools go beyond simply “doing the books” for you, providing insight that can fuel growth.
Here are some financial tools that will help you to grow your small business:
Business planner
Plotting your next big success in 2017? In that case, you’ll need a robust plan in which you are able to set out what you want to achieve. Additionally, the plan will help you see what success will look like. Getting this done in a way that impresses your bank manager need not be a headache that it seems. LivePlan is extremely useful for this – with budgeting, forecasting, and competitor analysis all built into the process.
Check it out
Red tape can take up a lot of your time as a small business, but tools can help ease that burden and free up your staff to do the sort of productive things that can make you some more money. You can’t afford to make a mistake with your payroll, but accurate and secure documentation can be made an awful lot more straightforward by using QuickBooks’ voucher checks – especially if you already use its popular software to handle your accounts.
Financial Tools for Security
Businesses from all sorts of industries are suffering from preventable cyber attacks and that means that security needs to be in the conversation when it comes to money. Losing dollars directly, or through data and reputation loss, can be a big problem. While there’s no silver bullet that can stop cyber attacks completely, there are tools out there that can help to make your data as safe as possible. Comodo is a cost-effective option, while Symantec has packages that are tailored to understanding the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.
Financial Tools for Data Analysis
Growing businesses need to be able to spot opportunities and track their performance closely. That means keeping a really close eye on key performance metrics that impact upon the bottom line. As a business, it can be tough to track and monitor streams of data from several different sources, but that’s where Grow can help, pulling it into an easy-to-use platform that gives you an at-a-glance view of the things you need to know when you need to know them.
Why not give these tools a try? You might find your business grows this year if you do.
