Budding startups can truly be a bustling place with tasks lining up one after another. It can be really easy for entrepreneurs to get stuck in the whirlwind of every little task list, update, or decision. Although it's a good thing to have a thriving startup, it is necessary to ensure that this hive of activities is goal-focused and productive in true sense.

To keep yourself on top of things, you must find appropriate startup tools that you can rely on.

But, finding these apps would be another task on your to-do list. So, to save you time, down below is a list rounded up to get the most done from your team and your startup with a growing workload.

ASANA- manage your projects

Asana is an outstanding management tool designed for entrepreneurs and founders. If you struggle to keep track of tasks that need to be done, deadlines, and who is responsible for what, Asana could prove to be a haven for you.

With Asana, You can make project lists, manage them, make team pages for project discussion, build task boards and conduct team communication in an organized manner. Automating processes with forms, workflow, and project templates is also available. What's more, you can even integrate with other tools on Asana.

Let's take simple examples to understand how Asana can help your life as an entrepreneur.

Asana is quite popular among brand developers, system engineers, and web developers. They use it to:
- Allow their clients and colleagues to keep track of the progress and what is in the pipeline.
- Use it for reminders.
- Solve communication problems for different teams and group chats- sales, designs, engineers, and marketing.
- Drag and drop functionality, tag teams, set priorities, and check teammates' calendars/workloads.

BUFFER- manage your social media presence

A buffer is a startup tool that lets you manage your startup's social media presence.

It allows you to - plan, arrange, publish and analyze your posts in bulk for LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

With Buffer, you can measure your performance, get insights across multiple accounts, and even create reports from one analytic dashboard.

You can compare paid and organic results of particular hashtags, posts, and stories, plan and set reminders for the following posts, skip to critical comments with intelligent alerts, labels, and hotkeys, and view unanswered comments on a straightforward dashboard. All these functionalities help you turn your followers into your fans.

As an entrepreneur, it is essential to use the full potential of multiple social channels. However, it can only be achieved when you find sharing content and recognizing what's working for you easy.

ZENEFITS- manage your HR

Being a startup, you will not be able to afford an HR team right from its inception. So naturally, hiring, paperwork, and compliance stress fall on managers.

This is where Zenefits can be your saving grace.

Zenefits is a Human Resource Information Management Platform that lets companies manage multiple HR functions such as payroll, taxes, stock options, compliance, health insurance, benefits, attendance, vacations, and paid time off in one place.

It's an automated HR system that reduces workload by asking employees to fill in necessary information only once and remove them from payroll and benefits within a few clicks on termination of employment. This cloud-based platform acts like a self-service portal and an employee directory offering best-in-class insurance and benefits packages from third-party providers.

Zenefits is also partnered with Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Hangouts, Asana, and Zapier to work seamlessly with varied and relevant HR information.

OUTREACH- execute your sales smartly

Outreach is a software designed for your sales team that can help improve your communication with your clients. This startup tool automates sales engagement using a broad set of interactions. It even automates components related to your buyer's journey and customer lifecycle.

Outreach allows you to control mails, voice solutions, and social interactions. It works with an AI/ML toolkit that reduces the toil of manual CRM data entry and syncs data across various other tools so that your sales rep stays focused on selling.

Along with this, Outreach provides real-life assistance for customer interaction; stores lead insights in one place, forecasts with pipeline analysis, and team and rep level projections so that you can obtain insights and make data-driven decisions.

The software even alerts you about any potential risks in your pipeline. You can even measure team and individual rep pipelines by employing rep productivity scorecards.

The primary services offered by Outreach are as follows.
-Auto-Dialer Lead Management
-Sales Automation
-Lead Management
-Lead Scoring 
-Call Recording
-Contact Management
-Document Management
-Email templates.

UPWORK- find freelancers effortlessly

Upwork is software that connects businesses to freelancers from various fields. If you need a writer, developer, or designer for short-term projects, Upwork is the key.

Upwork provides you with a platform for work management, payment, posting jobs, and finding prospective matches. The app charges a processing fee per payment to your hired freelancer. As a result, you can approach a larger pool of specialized talent and get faster deliverables with easy hiring, finding, and scheduling flexibility.

For example, companies use Upwork to get higher-level assistance for general administrative work. Another popular freelancing job is data analysis and record keeping by marketing departments.

QUICKBOOKS- manage your finances

QuickBooks is popular accounting software that helps startups, freelancers, and Small and Medium-sized businesses keep track of their financial health. You can organize your cash flows, receipts, expenses, and custom invoices.

QuickBooks offers innovative automation options to help entrepreneurs save time, enabling the software to perform all financial tasks. As a result, you can use this software and spend more time optimizing your products.

You can employ Quickbooks for invoicing customers, managing those invoices, tracking cash flows, preparing taxes, paying bills, and generating reports.

Here's a list of some primary functions that you can perform on Quickbooks.
Create and Track Invoices- record, print and email your income, and view your accounts receivables.
Simplify Taxes- Quickbooks can invite your tax preparer to access your account directly to let them review your statements or print information to prepare your return.
Print Financial Information- manage and print your Profit and Loss report, Balance Sheet Report, and Statement of Cash Flows.
Payroll- QuickBooks includes an automatic payroll function that calculates and runs employee payrolls. You can effortlessly fill your employee's time and the hour's flow to your invoices with a payroll module.
Track Employee Time & Expenses- Employees can enter their time, and the time entered and assigned to a customer is added to their invoice. Any expense entered can be marked as billable, just like time.
Accept online payments- offer your customers to pay online directly from their emailed invoice.

Conclusion

Starting a business can include swarming workflows and overwhelming projects. Any organization's productivity relies on how you manage your time, information, tasks, and resources.

Therefore, a business owner must become a maestro of their time and adopt suitable productivity software. This way, entrepreneurs can have more time to focus on business advancement than just day-to-day operations.

These startup tools can automate several business duties so that you can run your firm without losing your mind.

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As the world of technology is set to go places, we are witnessing accomplishments that could only be featured in science fiction before. One of such feat is Human Augmentation. Since human capabilities are already extensively dependent on machines, the need to add an augmentation layer to human skills or, at the least, humanize interactions between them has risen. Hence, the growing attention toward technologies like implantables, injectables, exoskeletons, biometrics, brain-computer interfaces, Augmented and Virtual reality (AR/VR), wearables, and smart devices.

The concept of Augmented Humanity can be seen as "technology-enabled humans" who can perform tasks at levels they would be unable to reach without technology. Other common names for the field of Human Augmentation are "cyborgization" and "Human 2.0," as they enable cognitive and physical improvements as a part of the human body. It not only increases but is paving the way for creating new unimaginable human skills. This field of technology can prove to be a catalyst bringing massive changes to our society and lifestyle at a fundamental level and a vast business opportunity for emerging as well as existing tech businesses to become an intercessor between people and this ever-so-exciting technology. Therefore, it would be wise not to hang back and leverage the first mover's advantage in this upcoming market.

Smart Glasses and Contact Lenses

The vision sector has been one of the few industries witnessing the benefits of human augmentation innovations. The most common human augmentation tech application in this industry is that of smart glasses and lenses. This technology aims to make vision more accessible for visually impaired and blind people. There are startups like Envision and even established companies like Google that are in the process of building software that enable you to reply to messages, attend a call, listen to music, and command voice assistants using their smart glasses.

Besides that, for the visually impaired, you can also find practical applications of smart glasses and lenses in businesses. For example, employees can use these glasses in workplaces, from factories to stockrooms. Using these, they can receive information and instructions through sight paired with hearing.

Teslasuit

Teslasuit is a wearable full-body haptic technology that helps create a far more immersive experience than your VR/ AR devices. This intelligent suit aims to recreate life touch, simulate real-life feelings and sensations, record your movements and positions, provide haptic feedback on the visual simulation, build muscle memory, deep learning environments, and autocorrect techniques. The suit employs Electro Muscle Stimulation (EMS), a motion capture system, and sensors. This tech, therefore, will help you make your AR/VR and flat-screen experience far more realistic and enveloping.

As a result, Tesla suits can be used to make gaming, movie watching, training, animation creation, performance monitoring, and capture and human factor testing (research, data analysis) experiences far more efficient than in the past.

"Buzz" Wristband- Smart Hearing Aid

It is another wearable human augmentation device that resembles a wristwatch and mimics the ear's cochlea. This wristband called Buzz turns sounds into vibration patterns and transmits them via the nervous system to the brain. This device has created a unique sensory channel reaching the brain's auditory processing center.

It focuses on sending data streams to your brain through haptic feedback, that is, the sense of touch using over 4 billion patterns of vibrations on the skin. The band-buzz can also be used by one who doesn't have a hearing impairment. It can be used in various modes where you can adjust unnecessary background noise, filter out snoring noises during sleep while still getting alerts during emergency sounds like- the siren or smoke alarms, and even use music mode where you can feel the pulse of the beat and experience nuances of the melody.

Bioprinting

Bioprinting is a type of 3D printing or an additive manufacturing process that prints an object layer-by-layer using a digital file as a blueprint. But unlike standard 3D printing, bioprinters print with biomaterials and cells and create organ-like structures allowing living cells to multiply. Moreover, this relatively new technology has a promising future in various industries like medicine and cosmetics.

In brief, bioprinting can be used in the area of:
Drug development: Bioprinted tissues can be used instead of living subjects during the early stages to determine a drug candidate's efficacy. This can help reduce research costs and the amount of time required for results.

Wound healing: Researchers can now work with tissue-specific bio-inks like artificial skin cells, hepatocytes, and neurons. They will soon use these models for therapeutic procedures like skin grafts, bone bandages for combat wounds, and even plastic surgery.

Artificial organs: One of the most impactful possibilities is that of artificial organs. With bioprinters able to print organs, hospitals would no longer have to keep their patients on waiting lists and free them from the hassle of a worrisome search for a donor.

Language Translator Earbuds

These earphones are app-connected and translate human speech into multiple languages helping people converse without language barriers. Rigged with a full suite of voice translation solutions, advanced speech recognition, and machine translation, users can be a part of professional multilingual conversations across various industries like business, hospitality, education, and events. To work this system, you must download an app where all the translation takes place. You can employ three modes after connecting multiple earbuds via BlueTooth.

These three modes are converse mode, lecture mode, and listen mode.

These modes allow you to choose languages and dialects, create a one-way system to translate your speech, stream it through your smartphone's speaker in other languages, listen to a language of your choice, and pipe it into your earpiece.

Super Glove

The function of these gloves is just as exciting as they sound. Super gloves are a unique technology that extends power in your hands. An example of these gloves is RoboGlove, created by General Motors. These gloves can help you reduce your grasping fatigue in tasks requiring prolonged repetition of grasping efforts. As a result, they have the aptness to help you prevent injuries, speed recovery from injuries, and increase productivity in demanding work environments. In addition, the sensors placed on the glove's fingertips give wearer feedback that lets you know what they're sensing. Undoubtedly, Supergloves have a great future in manufacturing facilities as you can perform various activities with increased abilities.

HoloLens

The HoloLens is a display unit that can be mounted on your head or crown with a cushioned inner headband allowing you to fit it right in front of your eyes. This technology is supported by optical sensors, advanced optics, and holographic processing. This HoloLens can display information in holographic form, blend it with the real world, or even simulate a virtual world. This set has an HD camera, several microphones, depth cameras, an ambient light sensor, and Microsoft's custom "Holographic Processing Unit." All these features combined help the system track objects and walls in a room, pick up hand motions since the spatial orientation of the unit in the room and blend holograms into the environment.

HoloLens can be used excellently in the education, design, and gaming sectors. People can employ holograms to incorporate their ideas into real-world objects, display the physics of holography and transcend the potential of Augmented Reality.

Conclusion

Physical and Cognitive Human Augmentation will likely unfurl exciting improvements in multiple human capabilities in the coming years. You can safely expect these mature technologies to bring new consumerization effects in the market, improved business environment, security, regulatory compliance, social and ethical reconditioning, and a divergent impact on long-term mental and physical health.

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Just like how you wouldn't want to invest in a clothing line where everything is one size fits all, you'd probably not want to invest in software that operates on a one-size-fits-all model. Therefore, you must ensure you find a proper fit for your customer support team because, with a plethora of business models, services, and products in a market, the reality remains that one-size-fits-alls don't work. In addition, it can become a mammoth task to provide an extraordinary service if your customer support routine includes responding to emails via Outlook or keeping records of "sent mail" on Excel spreadsheets and post-it notes.

Luckily, one way to overcome this challenge is to use customer service software.

Customer Service Software allows businesses to manage, respond and organize all their service requests. It helps them track all customer service requests using one-click reports to understand their response times, get urgent alerts for emails from VIP customers, and notifications for unanswered emails that need to be answered.

That being said, ensure you are employing most segments and aspects for optimum customer service before employing software to enable efficient customer support. Only then will your numerous customer service agents be able to work together within the same tool.

Types of Customer Service Software

Help Desk Software

A Help Desk Software is one of the first tools that your customer support teams can invest in. It enables you to centralize all your customer interactions that are service related, and, depending on the tool you use, it can maneuver support requests from multiple channels like live chat, social media, email, and phone calls. Fundamentally talking, help desk software lets you streamline and manage customer conversations and enables better agents and customer experience.

Phone Support Software

In the current tech scenario, the phone support approach may seem like a relic of the past. But it may be surprising that over 50% of customers still prefer to use phones to contact a company for help. Moreover, this preference spans multiple sorts of demographics. People of every gender, age, and background opt for phone support. Therefore, it doesn't matter what industry you're in. In addition, you most likely have customers who would like to make a phone call to contact you. Phone support and contact center software can make your phone support a modern structure and let you handle those phone-based interactions far better.

Shared Inbox Software

A Shared Inbox Software is an email tool that allows several people to respond and access messages sent to a particular email address. Generally, organizational and automation features are also included to help constructively manage customer conversations.

Knowledge-Base Software

Knowledge Base Software is a system that allows companies to manage, organize, store, create, and share self-service content with an audience. Elements like Video Tutorials, FAQ pages, and how-to articles are common forms of content housed in a Knowledge Base Software. 

Broadly, there are two main types of Knowledge Bases: external and internal.

The content is public and accessible to anyone with an external Knowledge Base, whereas an internal knowledge base asks the user to log in to access the information. In other words, the content is private with it. Most tools focus more on singular use cases, but this software can manage both well. For example, it may be accommodating to think of an External Knowledge Base that is geared toward your customers, and an Internal Knowledge Base that is customized toward your employees.

Live Chat Support Software

Customers who want to converse with a live person are usually those who either cannot find what they need in your online help documentation or want to talk through a problem in real-time rather than explaining the issue in tedious emails. In such instances, live chat is a great option. It offers a feeling of nearness and immediacy of phone support while needing less resource intensity. As a result, live chat support has a much higher customer satisfaction rating than the phone, that is, 38% more. Like the tools mentioned earlier in this list, live chat software can be a standalone product and a sub-part of a Help Desk's more extensive suite of tools.

Messaging Tools

Messaging tools is an umbrella term that refers to software that allows you to provide proactive support. It could be Proactive Messaging Software, Chatbot Software, or some combination of the two. Whatever the case, a messaging tool's core goal is to minimize friction in one way or another for the customer.

CRM Software

Tired of managing all customer-related info manually? Customer relationship management (CRM) software can manage and track customer interactions. This software tool is most commonly linked with sales but has some successful customer service applications. The primary way it can achieve customer success is via personalization. With the data that a typical CRM software collects, you can anticipate their needs and formulate a specific experience for each customer based on where they're at in their customer journey.

Social Monitoring Software

In the old days, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms were simply digital hubs where people just posted pictures of food they'd eaten or vacations they had taken. Indeed, these are still significant uses for social media. But it has now become a partly important platform for people to seek support. It is commonly advised that a company should meet their customers where they already are. Although it is a good suggestion, taking on many channels in a realistic context is challenging as every team has limited time and resources. Every new channel requires either adding new resources to manage it or time and energy away from an already established channel. Social monitoring software can be extremely useful in companies with a high social support volume, so check your number before investing.

Popular Customer Service Software Platforms

Since there are various approaches and channels for customer service that you can leverage, for example, all-in-one solutions, niche services, or in-app support, kickstart your customer support, go through the following names and find the most appropriate support tools-

1. Help Scout

It is an all-in-one customer support software that focuses on agents' and customers' experiences. You can manage mail, centralize live chat and support queues, create databases of canned responses, employ collision detection, get metrics for busiest days, most common support requests, average response times, and which channels are most popular among customers.

2. HelpDocs

It is a standalone knowledge-based customer support software. It's a self-service tool that lets you find answers independently, allowing faster resolution time and fewer tickets for your team.

3. Olark

Another standalone live chat customer support software using which you can leverage intelligent automation, robust analytics, and team management.

4. Aircall

A call center supports software offering several different plans for teams of all sizes. These plans include IVR, the option to set custom business hours, and call queuing.

5. Zendesk

It is a customer support software for bigger teams allowing a ticketing system that lets you manage customer conversations. You can manage Twitter, chats, email, and Facebook interactions with relative complexity.

Other popular names in the customer service software sector are Freshdesk, Text-Em-All, Helpshift, HubSpot Service Hub, Salesforce Service Cloud, LiveAgent, ServiceNow, and Zoho Desk.

Final Thought

Ascertaining what software is the best fit for your company and your support team can be a daunting task. A wise thing to do in such a case is to choose a tool that meets your current need and is limber enough to cover your future needs while staying on budget. But don't forget, it is ultimately your customer service that matters the most. In order to fix your brand name among clients quicker you can also choose to hire a professional for online reputation management of your brand that can help you combat negative reviews faster and more strategically

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New trends and new technologies pop up all the time. Marketing teams worldwide that remain agile, quickly adapt to the latest fascinations in the community, and eventually tend to be the most successful.

But, there is a fine distinction between being inspired and jumping on the bandwagon to be a part of some fad and actually making a new tech reap benefits for your business. Virtual And Augmented Reality technology are examples of technology gradually expanding its reach and establishing its presence across various market segments.

Before diving into the use cases of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, let's quickly establish their meanings for clarity.

Augmented reality (AR) augments your physical environment by adding digital elements to a live view, usually with a camera on a smartphone. Whereas, Virtual reality (VR) technology is an entirely immersive experience that replaces a real-life environment with a simulated one, usually using a headset, both these reality technologies either replace or enhance a real-life environment with a simulated one.

Now, let's look into a few use cases that you could employ in your marketing mix.

Add VR Elements to Your Packaging

If you are using mere cardboard, a bottle, or a can package your product, why not convert that package into a VR experience right after your customer is finished using your product?
Popular brands like McDonald's, Jack Daniel's, Coca-Cola, and Budweiser have successfully launched similar projects. However, if you wish to take a different route, you can use elements to integrate AR. For instance, The Jack Daniel's AR Experience takes its consumers on a virtual journey of the Jack Daniel Distillery utilizing a series of pop-up book-style dioramas that they can see using an AR app.

The Jack Daniel Distillery's AR Experience app offers a virtual tour allowing users to take a closer look at the whiskey-making process and learn the story about the man himself, Mr. Jack Daniel.

Another example is Francesco Rinaldi, a pasta sauce company that brought its brand icon -Mrs. Rinaldi to life using the same AR app. It enabled Mrs. Rinaldi to share her stories regarding her pasta sauce.

Then, depending on the pasta sauce line, Mrs. Rinaldi fascinatingly delivers a specific message for that particular product. All of this can be experienced by employing just a smartphone camera and an app.

Create a 3D Shopping Experience

With another exciting feat of Virtual and Augmented technology, you can carry unlimited amounts of virtual inventory without buying and stocking everything physically.

Your Customers must undoubtedly feel the incessant need to take a closer look or test your products on your online platform. So why not be visionary and be one of the first to introduce a VR shopping experience for your dealerships or stores?

Let your customers explore items they want to try, drive or see placed in their rooms and have a 360-degree view of your showroom without physically reaching your outlet location.

This not only creates a memorable buying experience but also gets the buyer acclimated to your product's experience before landing a sale. In addition, this allows you to scale your sales exponentially.

Show Your Company Initiatives in First-Person POV

Let's take the example of shoe brand Toms. The company is known for undertaking a lot of humanitarian projects. They recently decided to give away a pair of shoes for every pair of shoes they sell.

Toms partnered with VRse to create a lay-in store experience to showcase their buy-one-give-one model. Using VR headsets, their stakeholders and fans can virtually go on the company's Giving Trips. They can watch as children get measured, gifted shoes, "meet" recipients, and even see their actual living conditions.

Similarly, you can mimic the same approach with different gigs where your audience can get a first-person POV. Consumer engagement of this form can emulate overwhelmingly emotional and positive reactions.

Build Personalized Ad Experiences

More than anything else, users are hooked on experiences.

A good, immersive advertisement puts the audience in the middle of a story and makes it feel personal to them. The AR and VR tech has opened doors to highly engaging campaigns that users will seek to watch because of innovation and immersion. Luckily, this is what creatives and advertisers want.

Instead of displaying advertisements in the long-established traditional sense, consider creating the equivalent of banner ads that people can view alongside the content they are already looking at. Many companies at this time are not only creating such experiences not only to show their brand but also the VR technology itself.

JW Marriott has capitalized on this technology to create a more extensive customer base by creating virtual getaways, enticing them with a taste of what they can have. Such immersive ways of displaying ads inspire people to book a holiday, thinking of the virtual getaway they experienced by the extension thought of Marriott.

Offer Virtual Makeovers and Filters (Beauty Brands)

The most famous examples of this marketing campaign are the Makeup Genius app released by Makeup and hair-care brand L'Oreal and Sephora's Virtual Artist.

These apps allow its customers and prospects to use virtual try-on, letting them try various makeup styles and hair colors. This is not only a convenient way of pushing your product to people but is also hygienic. Customers no longer have to share samples to test makeup; they do not even need to venture to your in-person stores to try and buy your products.

Companies are even using these apps to offer personalized recommendations and send alerts for new products.

Conclusion

Marketers are increasingly jumping on board and pushing AR and VR technology investments.

They should aim to create unique and inviting campaigns that the audience looks forward to participating in. Needless to say, it is only possible to pull off in an industry willing to experiment.

Even so, VR and AR are at the early stages of tech; one thing is for sure they are here to stay and will continue to change business operations and consumer experience for a long while to come. As a result, we will witness more businesses jumping aboard.

Nonetheless, the key is to use this tech more innovatively and unpredictably. Once VR and AR become standard practices, the advertising industry is bound to unlock and shape exceedingly exciting marketing strategies for years to come.

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