Are you considering spending your retirement life as a business consultant?
Or
Are you looking forward to creating a thriving career as a business consultant?
In the above 2 questions, regardless of the age difference, setting up a business consultancy remains the same.
When there is a business boom, the demand for business consultants increases proportionately. With efficient knowledge about the best practices for a particular business, you can make your mark as a renowned business consultant.
While knowledge of the business part/area remains extremely important for the growth and success of your company that helps business, taking advantage of certain tools can provide extremely valuable help to you as a business consultant.
In this article, we will walk you through the type of tools required for setting up a successful business consultancy.
5 Types of tools for business consultants
On this page
1. Scheduling software
Scheduling software refers to local or cloud-based computer applications or programs designed to plan, organize, and manage tasks, projects, resources, meetings, and appointments.
The basic motivation behind utilizing the software is to better manage your time by optimizing employee schedules to build up a successful consultancy. Furthermore, as a business consultant, streamlining your scheduling processes is crucial for building an effective client base.
Learning how to manage your schedule effectively with the right tools is essential for maintaining productivity and organization.
What features to look for in scheduling software?
Regardless of the different scheduling software available in the market, some common features you may look for in a tool are task automation, calendar views, appointment booking, task allocation, reporting & analytics, reminders, notifications, and reporting capabilities.
Also, you should be able to access these features through an intuitive and user-friendly interface.
What are some examples of scheduling software?
Some of the scheduling software tools that you can utilize for your consultancy are –
- Appointy – Best for managing schedules and meetings
- Meeting King – Best for automating agenda and creating interactive task lists
- SplashThat – Best for planning and scheduling meetings
2. Project management tools
Project management tools are powerful software applications that enable you to plan, monitor, manage, organize, and execute projects from a single, centralized location.
These customized applications can be tailored to your needs while improving collaboration, streamlining tasks, and ultimately, achieving project success.
Business consultancy is all about juggling multiple tasks and projects and managing overall workflow. While it may seem manageable initially, keeping your priorities straight becomes difficult when the client count increases. And for effective and successful handling, you need a dedicated workflow planner and organizer.
What features to look for in project management tools?
Project management tools differ as per application. However, some essential features to consider when selecting a project management tool are file sharing, commenting, real-time communication, task scheduling, data visualization reports, resource allocation, customizable dashboards, and various task views, such as Gantt, Kanban, Table, and Calendar.
What are some of the project management tools examples?
There’s a range of project management tools at your disposal for your consultancy, including –
- ProofHub – Best all-in-one project management and team collaboration tool
- Jira – Best for software teams working on bug detection and tracking
- Kissflow – Best for workflow automation
3. Time tracking tools
Time-tracking apps are robust software solutions to track your employees’ time investment, manage billable hours, and invoice clients.
These tools help you prevent your productivity hours from falling into holes and identify the areas with a better return on investment. You can use the tool independently or even in integration with some other applications.
As your consultancy business grows, keeping track of your teams’ working hours and managing timesheets for client billing becomes daunting. To overcome this issue and estimate your employees’ potential, you need to incorporate time-tracking tools.
This not only ensures that you keep a healthy workforce but also manages workload and resources accordingly.
What features to look for in time tracking tools?
A good time-tracking app should offer manual inputs, a built-in time tracker, timesheets, client invoicing, project budgeting, reports and analytics, budget tracking, and more.
What are some of the time-tracking tool examples?
Explore different time-tracking tools that can be useful for your consultancy, such as –
- Workstatus – Popular as a time & attendance management software
- Hubstaff – Best for managing work hours and timeline
- Clockify – Best known as the simplest time tracker tool
4. Communication tools
Communication tools facilitate seamless and real-time exchange of information, ideas, messages, and files between your team and clients for smooth task progression.
These help you maintain a structured communication flow in your organization while bringing everyone on the same page. It also ensures optimal connectivity even in scattered workplace environments.
No matter the service you are providing, communication plays a key role. Gone are the days when email communication was a significant part of professional communication.
With changing trends, adopting a piece of collaborative software, including Learning Management Systems (LMS), is the only solution to keep everyone informed, maintain your communication records, streamline your daily operations, and manage training and learning initiatives.
What features to look for in communication tools?
When selecting communication tools for your consultancy, the ideal features to consider are built-in chat, presence indicators, video conferencing, audio calls, shared calendars, task lists, project boards, file sharing, quick search, channels, mobile accessibility, and guest user access.
What are some of the communication tool examples?
Some of the communication tools that can be useful to your consultancy are –
- Slack – Best for swift and efficient communication
- Chanty – Best known for its built-in task manager
- Zoom – Best for video conferencing
5. CRM software
For building healthy relationships with your clients.
Client management software or client relationship management software (CRM) is an application that keeps track of all your customer interactions. It cumulates your customer data to optimize customer engagement strategies and drive your business consultancy growth.
Establishing a successful business consultancy heavily depends on how well you … your clients. Also, with continuous incoming queries, redundancy, and repetitiveness becomes a major issue.
Most of these queries are similar, which is why, creating an automated response system is your best bet. Having responsive CRM software in your arsenal, including recruitment CRM software, you can initiate quick and efficient responses to your client, building a healthy clientele.
What features to look for in CRM software?
Here are some key features, you should consider when selecting CRM software.
Data management, lead management, customer segmentation, email automation, sales pipeline, revenue intelligence, communication tracking, analytics, client engagement, customer analytics, sales forecasting, sales performance management support, and more.
What are some of the CRM software examples?
You can take assistance from different types of CRM software as required –
- Recruiterflow CRM – A comprehensive recruitment software
- Zoho CRM – Best known for its CRM functionality
- ZenDesk – Best for customer service and ticket management
How do you choose the right tools for your business?
As business consultants, you will be overwhelmed with the choice of tools available at your disposal. However, take note that the choice of these tools severely impacts the overall performance and productivity.
Below are the key factors you need to look out for –
- Pricing
Consider the price of the tool before purchasing. Make sure that you really need a particular tool for simplifying your work process. The excessive number of tools will eventually eat up your profit margin, turning the tables directly on you.
- The nature of the industry
Different industries require different natures of tools. While choosing specific tools be sure that the functionalities match the requirements of your industry. This helps in improving the overall quality of work.
- Preferences of your clients
Choose a tool that is easy to use. Being a business consultant, you may have situations where your clients have to use a particular tool. In such cases, the simplicity of the tool makes it possible.
Bottom line
Now that we have come to the conclusion, it is time for you to make a wise decision. There are numerous tools for business consultants in the market, however, selecting the right one is essential for establishing a successful consultancy.
Technology and tools are there for support, we should put in the hard work to see success. A tool will always remain a tool, it is how you use a particular tool that will define the overall success and growth of your business.
Featured image created using Canva.
