Small Business Owners Name Their Favorite Tech Tools in 2015

We’re all aware that whatever we’re doing for our businesses, there’s probably an easier, more efficient way to do it online.

Taking it a step further, there’s not only usually a way to do something easier with online technology, but mobile technology as well. In fact, small business owners tell us 80% of them are leveraging mobile technology. A third of them spend as much of 30% of their time working on mobile devices.

In order for this to be possible, they need a variety of tech tools that allow them to do things like share documents, access customer data and manage social media. It’s always easy, though, to know which tools to use for a given task.

That’s why SurePayroll has begun annually surveying small business owners on their favorite tech tools.

We know that these tools are extremely valuable in freeing up one of the entrepreneur’s most precious assets – time. When they have more time, they can focus on strategies for bringing in more customers, and improving their own products and services.

This list should also give you some ideas for solutions you might use.

There were some common themes among the highest ranking tech tools – ease of use, the ability to use across devices, and of course brand, as a name like Google Drive could be found high on small business owners’ list for both Cloud storage and organization apps.

In the social media space, Facebook, with its massive user base, continues to be the favored social network for small businesses. Salesforce, with its multi-faceted capability dominated in customer relationship management tools.

Our survey also found that 78% of small business owners have adjusted the way they do business to account for the changing technology landscape. Nearly a third have had to eliminate outdated products or services to keep up with technology, and 50% of small business owners are using online services to streamline business tasks, up from 44% a year ago.

So take a look at our list of small business owners’ favorite in 2015. Do you use the same? Will you start using one of these tools to get more of technology for your business?

Cloud Storage

1. Dropbox
2. Google Drive
3. Apple’s iCloud
4. Microsoft OneDrive
5. Box

Social Network

1. Facebook
2. LinkedIn
3. Google Plus
4. Twitter
5. Instagram

Social Media Management

1. Hootsuite
2. TweetDeck
3. Sprout Social/SocialFlow
4. Hearsay

Customer Relationship Management

1. Salesforce
2. Act
3. SugarCRM/Contact Plus/OnContact

Email Marketing

1. Constant Contact
2. MailChimp
3. Hubspot
4. Marketo
5. Eloqua/Infusionsoft/Silverpop/Unica

Organization Apps

1. Google Drive
2. Evernote
3. Tripit
4. Trello/Expensify/Asana

See more on SurePayroll’s Payroll Blog