The story of your start-up begins with a great idea. Thankfully, nurturing and developing the idea is often the hardest part. After you’ve survived the agony and the ecstasy of first envisioning, then selling your start-up idea to yourself and others, the actual work can begin. And it’s then that a carefully selected arsenal of apps becomes your best friend.
A few applications–like accounting software, for example–are pretty obvious entries on our list. But there are a few tools that, if you’re a brand-new start-up founder, you may find interesting. Some of the apps in this arsenal will help you get a lot done with minimal personnel, since you are just starting out and your “human resources” may be limited to you alone, or you plus a co-founder.
Thankfully, the latest cloud-based apps supplant many of the roles that would take resources that otherwise might not be available to you.
As a start-up founder, you’ll need apps to help with the following tasks:
- Business workflow
- Market research
- Customer relationship management (CRM) + sales automation
- Accounting
- Backup and archival
- eCommerce/Shopping Cart
- Marketing automation
- Social networking software
- Business analytics
- Everything else!
This article aims to help you find the right app for each task. Here are our picks of the ten best apps for startups.
![Mulesoft cloudhub integration platform as a service for start-ups]()
CloudHub (for Business Workflow)
CloudHub is a software-as-a-service (Saas) integration app. This is a handy tool to add to your arsenal, first. CloudHub is a foundation for your rapidly evolving network of applications. It’s an app that lets you connect other apps as needs arise. CloudHub is designed so you can focus on actually using all the other apps you’ll need as your startup grows.
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SurveyPocket (for Market Research)
SurveyPocket helps you put together mobile-friendly surveys, if you haven’t yet uncovered the secret sales value of surveys, we’re confident you will, eventually. Just think about it: how else can you get to know your target customers better than by surveying them – before you invest time, money, and effort in the wrong endeavors.
As you roll out your startup, SurveyPockets lets you get feedback from your audience, and it’s an app that is especially capable of mobile surveying. Because there’s great wisdom in asking your customers if they’d like a new product or service BEFORE you develop it, SurveyPocket is an indespinsible tool.
![Salesforce Mobile for start-ups]()
Salesforce Sales Cloud (for CRM + Sales Automation)
You can’t really talk customer relationship management (CRM) without talking about Salesforce Sales Cloud. Salesforce is the industry standard for CRM, and it’s a great starting point for your new business. Salesforce effectively primes your customer-interfacing business channels for sales.
What’s more, due to its wild popularity, Salesforce Sales Cloud is also among the most compatible apps on the market. Salesforce also provides excellent customer to you, to help you get started using it to serve your own customers right away.
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FinancialForce Accounting (for Accounting)
FinancialForce Accounting follows Salesforce Sales Cloud on our list with good reason. FinancialForce Accounting has been designed to work seamlessly with SalesForce, making it the most logical choice for your all-important accounting needs. FinancialForce puts all your accounting activities in the cloud, in one centralized, secure location. Since it connects with Salesforce, FinancialForce is unique among cloud-based accounting apps in that records each sale that results from direct customer engagement, on-the-fly.
![zoho docs for backup and archival]()
Zoho Docs (for Backup and Archival)
In the course of running your new business, you’re going to generate tons of documents from day one onward. You’ll have proprietary, sensitive documents that you can’t afford to lose, as well as accounting and tax reporting-related documents that you’ll need to store for years. Zoho Docs is a great place to start with online file storage. Zoho Docs is a secure file storage solution that adds user access control to an otherwise intuitive set of features.
![suredone eccomerce app for start-ups]()
SureDone (for eCommerce/Shopping Cart)
SureDone is a multi-channel online selling solution. It allows you to easily sell from your eCommerce website, as well as from marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, and Google Shopping. If your startup plans to offer any type of products, SureDone is the perfect choice to help you reach the widest market possible, easily.
![exacttarget marketing for start-ups]()
ExactTarget (for Marketing Automation)
ExactTarget makes our list for two reasons, the first being its wealth of marketing personalization and automation tools. Additionally, ExactTarget is designed to integrate with SalesForce, which we’ve already mentioned in this article. ExactTarget manages marketing across online, email, and social media channels. It also facilitates A/B split testing, which is a handy feature you’ll likely appreciate as you seek to grow your startup by adding to your marketing mix.
![hootsuite social media management app for start-ups]()
HootSuite (for Business Analytics)
HootSuite is a social networking app that reduces the time it takes to manage your startup’s social media presence. You know that social is supremely important, so it’s something you can’t afford to overlook. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are requisites at this point.
That doesn’t mean you have to spend your whole life keeping up with social sites. HootSuite not only lets you automate posting and sharing, but it tracks brand mentions and inquiries and reports them to you, all from a convenient dashboard.
![decibel web analytics for start-ups]()
Decibel Insights
Decibel Insights comes into play after you have a website for your startup (and you know that’s one of your top priorities!). Decibel Insights examines Web traffic and tells you, literally, what’s hot. You’ll love the heat map feature, which lets you see exactly what in-page elements of your various landing pages are most effective. You can see what captures your audience attention, with a surprising level of detail, with Decibel Insights.
![Zoho creator build custom apps and workflows]()
Zoho Creator (For Everything Else!)
As your business grows, it’s needs will inevitably become unique. That makes it important for you to be able to build custom business applications. Zoho Creator, as the name implies, lets you create business apps with minimal programming knowledge, using a modular design platform.
Zoho Creator allows you to use drag and drop to bring together custom business applications with forms, tables, workflows, and other processes easily. Zoho Creator works with your business databases, too, letting access existing data in new apps of your own innovation.
Are your armed with the best apps for startups?
Starting up is an understandably exciting time for you as an entrepreneur. The prospect becomes even more appealing when you maximize what you can get done with apps, even at a stage in your business when cash and personnel are scarce.
If you need more tools for your specific business, GetApp keeps an up-to-date listing of all the business apps on the market, including accounting and financial reporting apps, sales apps, customer management apps, human resources apps, and many more. Choose an assortment of apps that helps you tell your startup story, the actionable way!
The post The Top Ten Essential Apps for Start-ups appeared first on GetApp Learning Center.
