As a small business owner, you understand through your first-hand challenges how difficult it is to accomplish specific goals because of a limited budget. Other challenges may stem from a lack of expertise in a specific and vital area. Specifically, building and IT infrastructure present challenges that small business owners in previous years and decades were stymied by. However, modern solutions to these challenges are available to today's small business owners through cloud-based services. Understanding the primary cloud-based solutions available to your small business may help you to make smarter decisions going forward.
1. Intuit QuickBooks Online
Intuit QuickBooks has been available to small business owners for years, and this accounting 
solution makes it easier for you to manage your books, project your financial status into the future, create invoices and more. This online application has incredible depth, and it is flexible enough to be useful for almost any small business environment. If you are challenged by financial management or if you feel that financial management is taking up too much of your valuable time each week, this may be a solution to take a closer look at.
2. Zapier
If you are looking for a collaboration tool, Zapier is an excellent solution to consider. Zapier makes it easy for you to connect the apps that you use most frequently together for seamless efforts. Workflows can be automated in many ways, and you may be able to save an exceptional amount of time and energy because of the collaborative benefits that this tool provides. It is functional with a wide range of popular business apps. You can learn more about the apps that it can connect for you to determine if it may improve your current work processes.
3. MailChimp
Email marketing is an effective, direct way to communicate with your customers, but it also is stressful and time-consuming. MailChimp takes the time and stress out of planning, executing and even analyzing email marketing campaigns. Through its impressive features, small businesses can level the playing field with larger companies that have a more substantial marketing budget and more in-house assistance. You simply use the platform to build a campaign and to customize your message. There are even pre-built automation features that make it fast and easy to execute your campaigns.
4. Microsoft Power BI
Managing business intelligence tasks is a common challenge for many small business owners, and Microsoft Power BI strives to address those challenges head on. This is a user-friendly platform that is available to you for free. It enables you to organize and analyze data in a drag and drop environment. You can do everything from enhance analytics to print reports and more. The dashboard helps you to keep your analytics organized, and the dashboards can be perfectly customized to meet your specific needs. You can create attractive reports through this program as well, and the reports can easily be distributed to your entire team for viewing on any type of Internet-based device. The program is interactive with Microsoft Office 365 products.
5. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus
Viruses and malware are legitimate and substantial concerns for small business owners. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus is an affordable solution to this problem. This is a regularly updated program that works with Microsoft platforms. It has remote capabilities so that you can initiate a scan from your smartphone. Because of its affordable price and its convenient features, it is ideal for a smaller business that does not need to purchase many licenses to make the solution cost-effective. This program also makes it easy to secure your online experience and to properly manage passwords. The company has been in business for more than 15 years, and it serves millions of customers. It prides itself on its ability to quickly identify threats and to update its products accordingly to protect its customers.
With limited operating capital, it makes sense to feel as though your business is placed at a disadvantage in the marketplace. However, you can see that there are many applications and programs available that can help smaller companies stand on equal footing with their much larger and more well-established competitors. Analyze these applications today to determine if they could benefit your operations in a substantial way.