4 SaaS Products We Use Every Day
How Helm Automates
Despite our outsized social media presence Helm is a small business. Like many small businesses we are always looking to minimize costs and maximize efficiency through technology.
In this post we wanted to describe the Software as a Service tools we use to run our agency. We work entirely from the cloud and all of our tools are available to anyone with an internet connection. In this post we attached the link to the tool’s signup page the price we pay to use these services. We did this to provide you a frame of reference and to communicate that even businesses can benefit from using the free versions of many of these tools.
So without further ado, check out the software we use for communication, file creation, task management, and more!
1. Google Suite- Email, Documents, Storage
gsuite.google.com
Pricing Tier We Use: $5 per user per month
You may or may not be fully aware of the extent of your free Gmail account functionality — but every account includes Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Forms, Google Maps and Google Sites.
The G Suite takes everything that comes with your free Gmail account and optimizes it for business. Starting with custom email at your domain, added storage for Gmail and Drive, 24/7 support, and integrations with Outlook.
All of this is included for a nominal cost of $5 per user per month. Trust me, the value you will get from this lean and collaborative suite will be well worth sacrificing two cups of coffee.
2. Slack- Messaging
slack.com
Pricing Tier We Use: Free
If you’re sick and tired of unending and intelligible email threads, this is the tool that will stop the madness. Slack is a business messaging app that’s optimized for group conversations, integrations with file sharing, and productivity tools. The idea behind Slack is to make communication and collaboration easier between coworkers.
It is structured similarly to a social stream that keeps channels separated on the left-hand side. Users have the option to customize their Slack dashboard based on the channels they want to be a part of or have created.
Slack offers three basic features:
- Channels: Essentially the group-message feature, different channels organize open conversations within the Slack team. When you make a channel, everyone can see what is going on in that channel. You can create channels for different projects, topics, or a conversation between certain team members.
- Private Channels: These are simply intended to be more exclusive group messaging channels. Private channels are where you want to include confidential information that you would like to share with just a few team members.
- Direct Messages: This works just like email or texting. Reach one coworker quickly and directly.
In addition to the three basic features above, you can drag, drop, and share files within Slack conversations. These can include images, PDFs, spreadsheets, Dropbox, and Google Drive links. You can add comments, star to find later, and easily search your uploaded files.
Slack is becoming super popular with tech startups and established business for all the reasons above and more. Not only is everything archived and therefore searchable, but it’s also compatible with your iOS and Android phone so you can stay connected wherever you go.
3. Streak- Gmail CRM
streak.com
Pricing Tier We Use: $39 per user per month
It’s 2017… and its time to stop tracking leads in spreadsheets. Streak is a flexible CRM and process management system that lives inside your Gmail inbox.
Streak’s blends in with Gmail’s intrinsic functionality, which makes it an extremely sticky product and eases the learning curve.
Creating a sales pipeline is as easy making boxes for your leads and organizing them in the Gmail Pipeline. Boxes (like Gmail Labels), are simply folders in Streak that store your lead’s information and archive email correspondence. Once you have populated boxes for all of your leads you can customize your sales sales funnel stages in Streak and label your boxes accordingly. In addition to the funnel, Streak has email open tracking and mail merge capabilities.
A major benefit of Streak is that you are in it every time you open your Gmail inbox. No need to create a new tab and login to an another portal, simply go to your Gmail Pipelines label and you’re in your sales funnel. Normal email usage is not affected and labeling emails as apart of a lead box is as easy as starring them.
And as your email threads grow, Streak becomes more powerful. You can create custom search filters and sort contacts by “Emails Recently Viewed,” “Date Contacted,” or “Month Closed.” When saved, each filter becomes another view into your sales pipeline.
Streak helps us track our lead generation process, coordinate outreach, and manage follow up. All while keeping an organized and accessible record of our business development communication safely in the cloud.
4. Asana- Project Management
asana.com
Pricing Tier We Use: Free
Being a digital product studio that works under an agile framework means that our days are consumed by accomplishing a succession of tasks. Asana is a task management software that we use to ensure team collaboration and organize our work.
Asana is broken up into three layers…
- Workspaces: This is where you group various types of projects. You can consolidate your marketing, development, and internal projects into their designated workspaces.
- Projects: The projects area is where all your tasks are listed, grouped, tagged and prioritized.
- Tasks: Tasks contain specific information about a task, such as due dates, tagging, responsibility assignment, notes, comments, sub-tasks, and more.
Thankfully Asana is incredibly intuitive. As a new employee, I was able to figure out how to add tasks and create projects within about an hour of being introduced to it.
Managers and team members can comment, edit, link, and attach documents to tasks. The ease of collaboration within Asana helps our team hold each other accountable, and understand each others workload. That way if someone looks like they are overwhelmed or not completing tasks at their usual rate, our teammates can step in to provide support.
While we are a technology company, these modern SaaS products are not exclusively for technologists. We chose all four of these products because they can be applied to nearly any industry at various levels of scale.
I hope you found this article valuable and try some of these tools out for yourself. If you have any questions about how we use any of these products please do not hesitate to email me at matt@helmux.com or give me a call at (716) 867–1693.
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Helm Experience & Design is a digital product and UX focused studio proudly located in Buffalo, NY.
You can check out our work here and if you’d like to talk more about design, technology, or business just send us an email at team@helmux.com.
