7 Killer Apps And Services Your Business Needs Now

Whether you’re selling 99¢ mobile games on iTunes or hocking custom-designed $999 alligator skin armbands on an eCommerce platform, your new business is going to need some tools to be competitive and move quickly.

Right now there are a bunch of great apps out there to help you manage and monitor your startup or enterprise. Here are a few really nice ones:

Sendgine – Project-Based Email

Sendgine does away with the long lists of correspondence between contacts—emails, documents and attachments that must be searched for in an inadequately organized inbox. By creating a team-based home page for each new project, all correspondence between coworkers lands in one place for all to see, along with deadlines and milestone targets. It’s like inviting your team members into your own email-centric conference room.

NationalField – Your Business As A Social Network

Back in 2008, National Field co-founders Justin Lewis, Aharon Wasserman and Edward Saatchi met while working on President Barack Obama’s bid for the highest office in the land. To organize the massive network of campaign workers and supporters they built a Facebook -style social network that connected the entire undertaking. A year later they unleashed that same system for private companies focusing on work goals that have been met, progress reports and documents. Not only does NationalField streamline projects and communication, it can create a stronger communal bond within an organization.

Validation Board – Testing An Idea

Emerging from the team-based incu-celerator Lean Startup Machine, Validation Board began as a way for startups to test their business ideas by putting them through a gauntlet of   . The cool part is it can also act as a testing ground for products or services on the drawing board of more established companies. If you want to get into a mindset that allows you to critically test an idea while cutting away needless complications from its execution, taking advice from a startup engine is not a bad idea.

Intercom – It’s All About the Customers

Intercom’s customer connection engine allows businesses easy access to data on their customers or members—like their names, how long they’ve been a customer/member, when they last logged on, their ages, home town, etc. Custom searches and category allocation are possible, making it easy for businesses to zero in on who’s using their services by any number of filters. With that kind of intel in hand, companies – or marketers – can easily correspond and target them for special offers or customers service support requests. The company just raised $6 million led by former Facebook VP of Growth, Chamath Palihapitiya.

AppMesh – Sooner Or Later, You’re Gonna Have To Sell Something

You’re going to need sales personnel at some point and when you do, look into getting them a tool like AppMesh. There are sales apps out there for enterprises but AppMesh’s simple interface may set it apart. Plus, it’s made for the on-the-go sales hero and works across mobile devices. On-call note-taking with tablet-phone interconnection, logging information while client calls, keeping track of customer info, and data-sharing with coworkers are all possible on the AppMesh platform.

Sprout Social – Monitoring Your Impact

There’s no denying the importance of a social presence in whatever industry you’re plying your trade. Sprout Social has come up with a product that helps businesses expand their social footprints through monitoring activity on social networks while also gathering information. Demographic and geographic data on your social audience, fan metrics and analytics, RSS feeds, monitoring social followers, scheduling, and Google Analytics integration are all tools in the Sprout Social toolbox.

Dropbox – A Standard

It wouldn’t make sense to put together a list of powerful productivity apps without including Dropbox. The sleek, simple inclusionary cloud filing system allows professionals or regular users to store their files on the web and share them with others as they see fit. Perfect for a fast-moving team that has no need for file cabinets or overly complex and cluttered interfaces. Once admired by Steve Jobs as a possible big-money acquisition for Apple , the private (for now) San Francisco-based company is a standard tool of business in 2013.

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