Not everyone is a natural planner, but when it comes to running a business, meticulous organisation, strategizing, and careful execution are imperative to success. 

Luckily, even for the organisationally-challenged, there are endless tools and tech options to assist you in optimizing how you run things, allowing you to drive your business towards the success you want. Let’s take a brief look at five planning tools you can look at in order to improve the way you run things.

Visual Task Boards‍

Visual task boards are a popular project management tool that assist with task organization and prioritization with visual displays. These are easy to make sense of for all different personality types, allowing you to see what’s going on in your business at a glance. 

You can make different boards for the various projects you’re running, add different tasks and to-dos as cards, assign due dates to tasks, create a Gantt chart to view your project schedule and collaborate with your team members in real time. Simple!

Comprehensive Project Management Software

Sometimes, it’s important to get a little more in-depth with more complex projects, which is where really high-quality project management software can save your bacon. 

These programs typically offer a variety of functions that will help you effectively plan (and actually execute) different tasks within a project. You can create tasks, set deadlines for them, track your progress, and communicate about what’s going on pretty easily. This kind of software is unmatched when it comes to teamwork and automating your workflow with the use of templates and other useful tools.

Cloud-Based Productivity Suites

If you’re looking to consolidate your productivity, cloud-based productivity suites are going to be your best friend. G-Suite (or Google Workspace) is the perfect example of this kind of software. 

Productivity suites include email, calendars, document collaboration tools, and cloud storage – all completely integrated and cloud-synced to make everything easily accessible to everyone in your team. You can plan and hold meetings, share files, and easily gossip with your coworkers from across the office.

Data Visualisation and Analysis Tools

Running a business (successfully) isn’t possible without looking at your data analytics and then actually doing something useful with the information. However, we’re well aware that sometimes, that info can be a little tough to decipher. 

Being able to visualize your insights though a data analysis tool like Microsoft Power BI will help you make better and more informed business decisions. You can create interactive reports, develop simple dashboards to show you what’s going on at a glance, and see your numbers clearly and easily.

Integrated Marketing and Sales Platform

Last but not least, the one you’ve heard a million times before – a CRM system. Every business owner has read, heard, or been told that they need a Customer Relationship Management system at one point or another, but few really realise their impact. 

An integrated sales and marketing platform will help you focus your marketing and sales strategies, keep a close eye on what’s happening with your leads, and act at the exact right moment, every time.