The Basic Software Every Startup Needs to Survive
There are a few essentials that every startup needs just to survive right out of the gate, find out what those are right here.
Photo by Lala Azizli on Unsplash
Right at the start, there are some things that your business just needs to survive, much like animals need food, water, and oxygen.
However, in reality, some of these things can be overlooked, and as a result those businesses fail quickly. To avoid this happening to you, here are some of the most overlooked things that every business needs when starting up to help it on its moneymaking journey.
For a start, you are going to need the right software:
Despite the numerous bad things that have come out of the past two years, a couple of really good things have happened within the business sector. This has been the release of various types of software and online services that have made businesses question why these were not introduced earlier. Either that, or it was something so painfully overlooked that businesses never bothered with it until they had no choice but to try it over the pandemic and are now kicking themselves because they should have invested their time and money in it far sooner.
Power BI
Power BI (otherwise known as Business Intelligence) is something that you might have heard of. Either way, your business should probably invest in it. Power BI software helps your business target sales leads and trends within your business by collecting data, such as which products sell the most, which advertising strategies work the best, what is the best time of the year to release a product, or even learning who your target audience really is. This can help you target your marketing campaigns more effectively, hop onto the appropriate trends on social media, and can also help you bring in more money to help fund your business.
Training software
You need to think about training software. This is something that you will need to be able to make the most out of your employees and the software that you give them to work with. Having your staff fully trained gives a lot of benefits, such as:
- Higher morale, meaning that work is done to a higher level consistently, and you have fewer people turning up to work late, or simply not at all,
- Lower accident rate, because staff will know how to handle situations and avoid as many accidents as possible,
- Less downtime, meaning that your employees will spend more time working than not, and,
- Better educated employees. This can make working so much easier as you won’t have to be reminding them what to do every five minutes, meaning that you can get on with your job and they can get on with theirs.
This can be all pluses for your business, so it would make sense to invest in training software wherever it is appropriate.
Communication and planning software
You should definitely think about communication software earlier rather than later within your business. Those that do, typically end up thanking themselves, as it is far easier to organize a small group of people and add to it, rather than try to reorganize a far larger group.
This is, needless to say, something far more useful if you do have a remote team, so you can find the right communication software such as Slack or Gantt charts to help organize them, keep them informed (and therefore their morale high) and keep them working hard on their projects.
As a starter business, finances are crucially important.
You need to see what options are available to your business as funding options. If they aren’t good enough, you need to find out why and come up with a workable solution. One thing that you are seriously going to need to look into is your credit score.
Your credit score is vitally important to your business. It will define which loans and what money options are open to you, and might even affect your own confidence in spending. If you feel that your credit card could do with a boost of points try:
- Paying your bills on time,
- Clearing any debt you are in (paying back your loans before getting out any new ones),
- Using your credit a little more often, but paying it all back, and
- Make sure your numbers are right, so you get a slightly lower chance of being rejected in the first place
After looking into your credit score, it might be a little bit more appealing to look into your potential loan options. These can be to help you examine and weigh up business lines of credit, which work a little bit like credit cards – they’re loans that are specifically to help you pay for equipment, or just starter business loans to help you get your business up and running. This can be incredibly useful to research, especially if you don’t know which one you might need the most.
You should also seriously consider cybersecurity
This is what is known in some circles as a ‘no-brainer’. Nobody who has ever owned a business in the last 100 years has looked at their shop and thought, ‘I don’t need a lock, it will all be fine’. On the off chance they have, they won’t be business owners for much longer because they will be robbed blind and faced with bankruptcy. In other words, cybersecurity is a base necessity if you own any kind of device.
Thankfully, cybercrime is so commonplace that devices are now pre-installed with cybersecurity software, such as antivirus, with their operating systems. This is just something that tech providers such as Microsoft have to do.
However, if you own a business, you are going to need extra layers of protection because you will be holding more data. If you don’t invest in cybersecurity, or even not enough cybersecurity, cybercriminals will freely steal your business’s data, as well as all of the data that customers, yourself, and your employees have put on the system, which can endanger their loved ones. This is something that you have to put into your budget and work around it, as you cannot cut corners for it to work; otherwise, there is no point having it in the first place: it is pretty much all or nothing – and entirely essential.
