To be successful as an online seller, your business has to run with a clockwork precision. Your orders from various online channels should come together efficiently. The warehouse response to these orders must be quick and precise. Your packed items must be delivered on time and without mishaps. At the same time, the queries of your existing and potential customers must be answered promptly. Your online and social media identity must be actively preserved. Taxes must be paid, inventory must be managed. There are so many in’s and out’s to this business, that as it grows, you need to start delegating more and more jobs to your team. Managing a team of different people with expertise in different fields is a task in itself. In this post, we will talk about the best tools and practices to manage your team so that you reap maximum benefits from your business venture. So, here are the N best tools to make sure your team works as a team.
Our Favorite Project Management Tools for Ecommerce Businesses
1. Asana
Asana is a great tool for collaborative project management for your office. With it, you can delegate various tasks based on priority levels to various members of your team, and track the progress of each with ease. The official motto of Asana is ‘Teamwork without Email’. And this makes sense, because anyone who has worked collaboratively with email as the only means of communication, knows how difficult it can be to sift through strings of email conversations to find one in particular. Asana offers a simple alternative to this where all of your team, whether onsite or offsite can be on a single platform and always in touch with each other. Other features of Asana include file sharing, adding notes, links, tags, etc. to tasks and a simple intuitive to-do list. The design is very user friendly and the fact that it is completely free as long as your team consists of less than 15 people is an added benefit.
2. Evernote
On the face of it, Evernote is just a simple note-taking app. Why would you need it as a collaborative tool for an ecommerce business? The truth is, Evernote is one of the finest office tools you are ever likely to come across. As this article explains, the key to using Evernote is to jump into it with both feet. It is not exactly a project management software, like Asana, but it can serve well as your repository for everything that you need to run your office. If you are an online seller, you constantly need to be online, checking up on competition and observing market trends. Doesn’t it usually happen that you forget that you created a bookmark for a very useful page, like this one? With the Evernote Web Clipper, you can easily store and recall all the important webpages in one communal space. Creating balance sheets, recording meetings, taking office notes becomes so easy. And the best part is, with Evernote for Business, your complete team can access all the data from one place.
3. Google Apps
It is probable that you are already a big fan of the Google Apps, and if you aren’t, you should be. There is rarely anything else in the market right now that is created to be as intuitive and comprehensive as Google’s range of products. With amazing cloud capabilities and a storage space of 15Gb, Google gives you immense freedom to create, store and edit on the fly. Living up to the motto ‘One Password, all of Google’, you get access to applications including but not limited to Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Keep, Mail and much more. You can use the vast cloud storage space to store all the analytical data and balance sheets that your business requires. Google Hangouts becomes a great way to be in touch with your team, all the time. A good thing to do for your online business is to acquire a Google Apps Suite from a Google Apps Authorised Reseller and Migration Specialist. This way, you be able to create your company email handle within Gmail, and utilize all the Google Apps as a team.
4. Browntape
An inventory management system is probably the most specialized tool created for online sellers. Browntape’s version of a multi channel inventory management system is specifically designed to work smoothly between parts of a team. While most of the products displayed above are great collaborative tools, none of them gets as close to the actual process of online sales as Browntape. With multi user access, your team members can log into the dashboard and edit information regarding orders, inventory, etc. for the group to see. Also, since many of the jobs, like sending emails to the customers, printing shipping labels and consolidating orders from different channels are performed by Browntape automatically, it works more like another member in your team, rather than a community interface. Browntape thus becomes an active part of your team’s processes – a virtual assistant for all your inventory management needs.
5. Wave
Wave is a service that handles one of the most important aspects of having a team – paying them. Connect your team with Wave and directly transfer funds into their accounts – whether they are your employees or freelancers. Integrating your Wave account with your company bank account also helps you manage invoices from freelance contractors and project based employees. Apart from that, Wave can help you in managing your accounting solutions for your online sales too. It also comes with a nifty analytics dashboard that keeps your informed about the financial aspect of your business.
These are some of the tools that you can use to make sure that your online sales team really works as a team. To know more about them and other queries about ecommerce businesses and online sales, get in touch with us at Browntape. We are the leading multichannel online inventory management system providers in India. We are always happy to be of any assistance!
