Entrepreneurship is tough–but this isn’t news to anyone who’s ever considered or tried to start their own small business and set up as a limited company. A successful entrepreneur is typically a “jack of all trades, and master of some.” They’ve got some combination of hard skills (designing, programming, or engineering), and soft skills (communication and creativity). Tools that support basic business functions are a great next step. Over the past nine years, Kdan has transformed from a startup to a full-fledged company, and we’re happy to share our recommendations with our fellow entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and anyone else who’s working to build their company up.
Conferencing Software
Meetings are inevitable, and they can’t all happen in the same physical space. Conferencing software, when compared to methods like WhatsApp or Skype, has an advantage because it offers higher-quality communication and screen-sharing. These factors make communication quick, easy, and efficient. Without them, we at Kdan wouldn’t be able to connect our offices across Taiwan, U.S., and China.
The Kdan team recommends U Meeting. U Meeting supports face-to-face communication with multiple parties at once with excellent visual and audio quality. U Meeting’s free membership allows for 50-minute meetings for up to 25 people, enough for startups. You can upgrade your membership to allow more participants and longer sessions, with other additional features depending on the plan you choose. That’s why we recommend U meetings for startups and mid/small-sized businesses. There are also several other conferencing software solutions, like Zoom, TeamViewer, or Join.me. As crucial as it is to have the right tools to run a successful business, so is the business exit strategy. Furthermore, substantial profit comes from a successful business. With a robust exit strategy, business owners can reduce their risk. Even if it falls, the exit strategy limits the losses.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
The more consumers you work with, the harder it can be to track data and maintain relationships with existing customers while in pursuit of new ones. That’s where, as their name suggests, customer relationship management systems help.
A good CRM system will let you track, store, and manage information on customer interactions. It also helps you get a better definition of who your prospects and customers are, understand your pipeline, and enable your mobile workforce to access important customer information on the go through cloud-based sharing. Kdan recommends Pipedrive.
Why? We like how it’s easy to use, has a very intuitive user interface, and offers features like smart email and complete sales management. Also, another consideration is that, compared to other larger CRM providers, Pipedrive has better pricing for startups.
Another CRM software option would be Aritic PinPoint, a full-stack marketing automation software platform for marketing operations teams or SMEs. It helps you to build relationships with leads, automate marketing campaigns and convert leads to paying customers easily. While we prefer Pipedrive, we have also seen or read about startups having success with Salesforce or Zoho CRMs for small businesses.
PDF Viewer and Editor
A PDF viewer and editor will make processes easier by allowing you to sign, store, transfer, and annotate contracts, white papers, or other digital documents. Having these tools streamlines productivity and keeps your business’s momentum moving forward. Nothing halts momentum like waiting for contracts to get signed.
At Kdan, we specialize in delivering this type of tool. We recommend our PDF Reader application within the Document 365 package. It lets you scan documents, convert them into PDFs, and add signatures or other annotations. You can also manage and share files through our secure Kdan Cloud service. In addition, PDF Reader supports Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive.
We’re quite proud of our products, their functionality, and our growing number of global users. But we don’t expect you to take our word for it. We encourage you to compare the value of these alternative options because we’re confident you’ll see the value our PDF Reader delivers. We invite you to try a free 14-day trial here.
