Software as a service, or SaaS for short, keeps growing in popularity every year. By the end of 2021, 99% of organizations will have implemented one or more SaaS solutions. So if you’re not already using software or tools in your business, you are falling behind.
There are a plethora of SaaS tools on the market and if you need to automate anything in your business, chances are that there’s an app or tool that can help you. But since there are so many tools on the market, you need to know which ones are worthy of your time.
Compliance automation tool
Compliance automation is the process of using tools to automate a compliance process that would otherwise be done manually. This technology allows companies to streamline all workflows related to compliance such as control evaluation, corrective action planning, and risk assessments.
If you use compliance automation software, you’ll have a solution that’s much more cost-effective than manual workflows and generates fewer reporting mistakes. With a compliance automation tool, you will have continuous verification of all compliance requirements.
Some other benefits of compliance automation tools include:
- Reducing the risk of security and data breaches;
- Eliminating human error and getting fewer reporting mistakes;
- Having your compliance status available on a single centralized dashboard;
- Identifying potential vulnerabilities before they become issues.
There are many different compliance automation tools but some of them stand out from the crowd as they were specifically designed for cloud-hosted companies. And since it’s expected that by 2025, 95% of workloads will be cloud-based, it’s best to get a tool that will fit your needs.
Communication and collaboration tools
Without good research and development, you wouldn’t have a business today. So if you want to come up with a concept that is commercially successful, you need to have great collaboration. Research and development go hand in hand with collaboration, so you need a good tool that will help you stay connected.
When your team shares their ideas with one another and listens to all input even outside of the office, it can create a lot of great ideas.
One popular communication and collaboration tool is Slack. This app has seen a big growth in popularity over the past few years because it’s easy to use and offers a lot of benefits. On the outside, it looks like a simple chatting app, but it comes with file sharing and app integration that make it such a useful tool.
Additionally, you should also have at least one file sharing service such as Google Drive, for instance. When you use a file-sharing service, your team members can work on documents together, make changes, leave comments, and see what everyone is contributing to the document.
Video conferencing tools
Video conferencing tools are another type of tool that has grown in popularity recently, especially since the start of the pandemic when more and more people began working from home. If you have a fully or partially remote team or have freelancers who work for you, you need a good video conferencing tool.
The most popular tool currently on the market is Zoom. It allows you to video conference and share your screen with multiple people. It is currently one of the most popular video conferencing platforms and is seen as the standard for most businesses.
If you want a tool that works just as well and is free, you can check out Google Meets. This browser-based solution allows you to share your desktop, video, and presentations with the people you’re video chatting with.
Sales and marketing
Finally, we need to talk about the departments which are responsible for making all of your company’s money, sales and marketing.
Just like the other categories, there are multiple tools that can help you create better campaigns and increase sales, but there are two you absolutely must have:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM). This tool will store all of your customer and prospect data into one location while also tracing and storing all customer interactions. If you’ve never come across this tool, this guide to CRM will help explain it more thoroughly.
- An email marketing tool. While many people believe email is dying out, it’s still one of the primary forms of communication between businesses and customers. With a good email marketing service provider, you can create better emails, send automated responses, enable personalization, and much more.
Final thoughts
Nowadays, it’s impossible to find a business that doesn’t use at least one SaaS tool. In this competitive market, you need to find ways to make your business more efficient and allow your employees to focus on more important stuff while automating repetitive tasks. And SaaS tools are just what you need to achieve that.