What new tool are you most looking forward to using in 2015 to help streamline your workload?
The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. HubSpot
I’m very excited to be consolidating all of ZinePak’s business development, online marketing, and CRM efforts to HubSpot in 2015. Their marketing and sales tools are replacing about six different SaaS tools we were using in the past. Having everything together in one place will save time and energy, and help us make smarter, faster decisions. – Brittany Hodak, ZinePak
2. Tivoli Workload Scheduler
I just recently read about the Tivoli Workload Scheduler, which is supposed to help you better align IT with business objectives to improve performance and reduce costs. My team is still fairly small, so I know I won’t need this app for the full features — but from what I’ve seen, it seems to be the most effective app of its kind thus far. – Rob Fulton, Exponential Black
3. Meet Edgar
We already love using Meet Edgar, but I know that in 2015 we’ll be able to streamline our social media posting and scheduling even more, and I’m especially excited about the result tracking that’s being built into the program, too. That’s going to save us a lot of time split testing headlines and social media content! – Nathalie Lussier, Nathalie Lussier Media Inc.
4. Wunderlist
Wunderlist
has been especially helpful in recording my to-dos, and then allowing me to delegate effectively. –Patrick Vlaskovits, Superpowered
5. Affinio
Social media can be a large haystack where finding the right influencers and buyers can be almost impossible. Affinio is an amazing tool to help find the buyer and influencers in your market. You can then use this information to engage with them on Twitter or serve ads to them on Twitter. It has been the best tool we have used to focus our time on activities that result in leads and opportunities. – Andrew Angus, Switch Video
6. Streak
I’m excited about using this Gmail extension on our team to streamline our CRM. It’s a great way to manage deal flows, customer satisfaction, and other routine processes within Gmail. Our team really likes the tracking and scheduling features, as well as the email snippets they can set up. Other CRM tools already have these features, but only Streak is native to Chrome and works within Gmail. – Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com
7. Foster.fm
I’ve been experimenting with Foster.fm to make social media easier to manage. This one-stop shop allows you to schedule posts over the course of days and weeks and analyze data about audience engagement. I am eager to continue exploring the app as we move into the new year, and I intend to make it a permanent fixture in my marketing routine. – Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep
8. Bitrix24
Bitrix24
is one of the coolest all-inclusive softwares I have seen. Bitrix24 has group chat and video, document management, a calendar, email, a CRM system, Human Resource capabilities, and so much more. There isn’t anything that I wish Bitrix24 could do but doesn’t. The best part is that you can pick and choose which parts you use. We started using this recently and absolutely love it! – Robert De Los Santos, Sky High Party Rentals
9. Asana
Asana
is a great tool for task management. It’s very flexible and simple. You can easily create projects, subtasks and separate assignments by teams so that goals and deadlines are clearly communicated. This makes communication ofyour expectations and performance assessment a lot easier. – Randy Rayess, VenturePact
10. Basecamp
Basecamp
is great for businesses that have outgrown Trello but love that simple, easy-to-use style. With anytool, you have to make sure to use it and continually update it. That’s the hardest part. – Elliot Bohm, Cardcash.com
11. LearnCore
LearnCore
is a very cool tool that empowers you to onboard your sales team efficiently and effectively. During set up, it forces you to think critically about your existing process. During usage, you new hires will learn quicker and better, and willstart winning business in no time. – Adam Stillman, SparkReel
12. TeamGantt
I recently discovered TeamGantt, a sleek project scheduling tool that allows for easily seeing how the diverse projects at a company overlap and align. TeamGantt allows managers and team members to establish baseline estimates for project deliverables, integrate with calendar tools, and set dependencies. – Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.
13. Hubot
Hubot
is our internal “Siri” who is executing daily routine tasks for everyone in the company, letting us focus on things that matter by making our lives easier. We have automated certain processes with it that is saving our team members hours each day. – Tolga Tanriseven, GirlsAskGuys
14. Rapid Planning Method (RPM)
I’ve used countless time management systems to varying degrees of success. However, the one that I’m most looking forward to using in 2015 is called Rapid Planning Method or RPM by personal development guru Tony Robbins. The reason I’m so excited is that the product goes beyond just scheduling things and will help me focus better on the specific outcomes I want to accomplish in the new year! – Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
