Business Owner Roundup: What's the Most Helpful Business Software You've Adopted Recently?

Technology is constantly evolving, and business owners looking to gain a competitive edge should stay up on how it can help them better run their business, improve their employee and customer experiences and do things more efficiently.

We asked business owners the most helpful business software they’ve adopted recently. Here’s how they responded:

Text-based audio and video editing

As a company that provides mobile-friendly tools to help accountants pass their CPA exam, we have a large library of audio files that we produce and maintain. We also produce YouTube video interviews with recent CPA candidates. A few months ago, I heard about Descript, an all-in-one audio and video editing software. It does automatic transcription of audio and video files so you can then edit them by simply deleting words or sentences from the transcript—and even easily overdub them with new information in the same voice as the original recording. Having the editing based on text is huge for our business because we need to frequently update key pieces of information over dozens of hours of all the audio files. Now we can simply search for a keyword or phrase and jump directly to the track that contains the information that needs to be changed or updated.

—Nate Hansen, founder, SuperfastCPA, Salt Lake City, Utah

All-in-one customer relationship management software

I own a creative illustration and design studio. The creative market is highly competitive, so it is critical to get legally binding contracts, accept digital payments and overcommunicate and overdeliver to my clients. We recently implemented the client management software HoneyBook. It allows us to handle all of these tasks in one place, with one subscription. It also makes for a more comfortable process for my clients, as they can make payments, view our message history, sign contracts and schedule meetings all through one platform.

—Kelsey Bolognese-Warrington, owner, Kelsey & C.J. Creative Studio, Collegeville, Pennsylvania

Performance management platform

We use a performance management program called 15Five. Employees fill out a short questionnaire once a week asking them to rate their week and answer questions about their goals and values. It tells us about the challenges and success they’ve experienced for the week. The reason this has been extremely helpful is that it allows us to address problems more easily, as well as giving us a much better ability to recognize good work. We can deal with issues as soon as they occur and can reward employees when their hard work deserves it—thereby improving the employee experience and creating a more desirable workplace.

—Seth Price, founding partner, Price Benowitz Accident Injury Lawyers, Washington, D.C.

Live chat

We recently adopted a fantastic piece of live chat software called Tawk.to. We can now chat with our potential customers and answer their questions as they browse our website in real time. Our conversion rate has increased and we are getting rave reviews from our customers on this easy and helpful piece of technology.

—Matthew Meier, founder, MaxTour, Las Vegas

Marketing automation software

We’ve recently adopted Klaviyo to manage our email marketing. What used to take a tremendous amount of time is now nearly 100% automated by using Klaviyo’s Flows feature. This has helped to significantly increase the amount of repeat orders we receive, as customers will now automatically get an email encouraging them to reorder right around the time they’ve finished their current bag of coffee.

—Brian Mellin, founder and CEO, Joe 2.0 Coffee, Syracuse, New York

SEO software

I’ve recently begun using Ahrefs to improve my real estate investing company’s online presence, and it has been phenomenal. We’ve spent the last half of a year developing our website to rank on Google and convert motivated traffic into leads. We’ve made significant progress, but the functionality that Ahrefs offers will take us to the next level. Their tools allow us to track our site against our competitors to see how we’re stacking up and where we need to improve. They also allow us to research topics for our blog that will bring more traffic and backlinks to our site.

—Jordan Fulmer, co-founder, Momentum Property Solutions, Huntsville, Alabama

What is the most helpful technology your business has adopted recently? Share your insights in the comments section below!