Prime Business Productivity Tools

By Author: Jen Silva
Total Articles: 4717
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Remember Charles Dickens' classic story A Christmas Carol? Remember poor old Bob Cratchit, toiling away on Christmas Eve? Bob was a book keeper and was kept busy updating Scrooge's ledgers by hand †using an ink pen. Maybe if Scrooge had invested in business productivity tools, Bob could have finished the books and been home on time for the holiday.

These days, Scrooge would be driven out of business if he failed to invest in productivity. Today's business race usually goes to the best equipped. Home based and small businesses, middle sized operations and large enterprises all have specific productivity requirements. Whatever the size and scope of a business, tools are available to boost productivity and competitiveness.

Small Business
A small business, owner operated with only a few employees or none at all, will at least need accounting software and tools for word processing, spreadsheets and data management, and presentations and graphics. Even the smallest outfit needs an internet presence in today's business environment.

The Microsoft Office suite is sort of a one stop shopping solution ...
... for many businesses. MS Office comes with Word, Excel, the Access Database and PowerPoint, all bundled conveniently in an integrated package. Office even makes it easier to create web pages.
IBM offers a couple of comparable suites of productivity tools, IBM Lotus Symphony and the Lotus SmartSuite

Small businesses accounting needs may be met by using a package like Peachtree, Accountedge or QuickBooks. Some vendors, like QuickBooks, offer online accounting to small companies, for a monthly fee.

These and similar products are affordable and user friendly, so training requirements are minimal. Small companies that want to economize can find open source software LIKE Open Office, but no cost means no support when things go wrong.

Medium and Large Businesses
Larger companies have the same productivity needs as smaller ones, but with size and success come new requirements. For one thing, a bigger organization has employees, so managing payroll becomes an important need. For another, larger enterprises need the ability to measure their performance over time and plan future activities and resource allocation. Companies with thousands of customers need ways to stay in touch with them.
The productivity requirements businesses face, and some of the products available to meet those needs include:

* Customer relationship management software. Many businesses choose Manage Engine Support Center or Sales Outlook CRM.
* Human resources software. PeopleSoft and Oracle have significant shares of the human resources software market
* Enterprise resource planning. Many companies turn to SAP and (again) Oracle fro resource planning tools.
* Product lifecycle management. EDS with its I-deals 10 NX Series, Agile software from Oracle and IBM's
Websphere industry meet the needs of many enterprises.

A major enterprise might also need shopping cart software for online sales, available from CyberStrong and SunShop. Large organizations need to measure productivity and so need to develop business intelligence tools, like Quella Business Intelligence Solution 2.

And of course this is not a complete list. As software becomes more powerful and easy to use, the productivity tools available to businesses will grow, with newer products becoming available daily.
About Author:
The author is a contributor and specialist of small business solutions and products. Please visit ChooseWhat at http://www.choosewhat.com to read about business solutions for entrepreneurs and small businesses.