Every business needs a baseline set of software tools
Getting your new business off the ground can seem like a daunting task, especially when it comes to finding the right technology to integrate without spending too much money. It doesn’t matter what type of business your are starting – you need the right foundation of software and tools to be efficient and professional. For me, that foundation started with Google Workspace. Let’s dive into how Google Workspace can help propel your small business to the next level.
What is Google Workspace
Formerly known as G-Suite, Google Workspace is a collection of productivity tools that provide a baseline of solutions for any business, whether it be an in-person tradesperson business, or a predominately online sales business. Google Workspace provides communication tools, basic business software, and storage and sharing capabilities. It charges a small monthly fee per user, which helps scale based on your business size. Let’s dive into the different tools that it provides.
Communication Tools
With a Google Workspace account you get the following communication tools:
- Custom email with their Gmail server and interface
- Google Meet
Communication tools are important for any business, and you want to be able to communicate internally as well with clients in a professional manner.
A professional email address (such as name@yourdomain.com) provides your business legitimacy and ensures that potential clients are communicating with your business, and not someone pretending to be your business.
Being able to use the Gmail interface is great for a lot of businesses starting out as many people already have experience using Google’s email tools with their personal Gmail accounts. Workspace allows you to manage all aspects of your business email addresses such as aliases (alternative email addresses that go to the same box) email forwarding, user settings and more. Being able to manage all of your business email addresses from one spot makes things much easier as your business grows.
Video Chat/Meetings
While there is something to be said for meeting in person, sometimes the convenience and ease of hosting an online video call for meetings makes Google Meet a necessity for any business. Offering most of the same features as other products like Zoom or Microsoft Teams, Google Meet allows you to schedule or create impromptu video meetings so that you can collaborate with your internal team members or with clients. Being able to share screens, review documents or see people through video chat allows to make better connections and keep people on the same page.
Collaboration and communication is so key when starting a new business, and these tools will help facilitate great communication.
Business Software
Sometimes people forget that they need basic software for their business like a document creator and spreadsheet program, and PowerPoint type program. Your Google Workspace account includes access to Google’s version of all of these tools, and allows you to access them from anywhere on the web without having to install on your computer.
Google Docs
Every small business needs to be able to create documents – whether it’s creating quotes or invoices, writing marketing and business plans, or producing reports for clients. Many people forget that the go-to Microsoft Office suite is not free – so if Google Docs is included in your Google Workspace account, it’s a great resource to use. It provides many features and is nearly on-par with what Microsoft Word provides. And being able to access Google Docs on the go through any browser no matter where you are is a definite plus.
Google Sheets
I’m a self-professed spreadsheet nerd – I use them to organize all my business data as well as many things in my personal life (such as budgeting). Google Sheets is a tool I use daily, to manage all of my finance data and client data. No matter what type of business you run, spreadsheets are an important foundational piece of software to use. Google Sheets is a great alternative to Microsoft Excel, and it some ways surpasses what Excel can do – with greater web integrations. While it doesn’t have some of the same programming depth that Excel does, there is a very high chance you won’t need that functionality anyways.
Available through your web browser you can track your business finances, organize your client data, create schedules and so much more. A business of any size and type needs spreadsheet software and this is a great solution.
Google Slides
While slideshow software doesn’t come up as much in a lot of businesses day-to-day activities – having access to Google Slides allows you to create presentations or slides that you can provide to your internal team, or share with potential/current clients.
Google Slides, like the other software options Google provides, is on-par with most of the features that Microsoft PowerPoint provides, at a much lower cost.
Slides may not be essential to every business, but it’s a nice piece of software to have access to for when the need arises.
Cloud Storage and Sharing with Google Drive
Google Drive is the most powerful piece of software that your Workspace account provides and you might not realize it. With Google Drive you get a large amount of server space (starting at 30GB) that you can access from anywhere and share with anyone.
Why is this important
Using online cloud services to store your business documents is important for organizing your files, creating back-ups of files and sharing files with those in your business organization and outside of it.
By creating a business shared drive, you can access and manage files from all of your employees and clients from one space. You can use the shared space to have multiple people working and contributing to a single file, instead of emailing files back and forth, which means they become messy and out of date.
With one click-sharing, you can get another employee or client to review and make additions to the document you are working on – easy as that!
Often files are too big to email people, and having an online shared drive is the answer to that. Get other users to upload their photos and video files all in one place in your shared drive, and never again have to search back through old emails trying to find the right file.
Why This is Important to Small Business
Many small businesses are looking for cost effective ways to get started, and Google Workspace effectively provides all of the basic software that any business will need to use, even at the beginning stages. Start off on the right foot with this business platform!