Knowledge and Information: one of the key weapons at the disposal of the entrepreneur in order for him to conquer the world. A recent survey by Interact documented that 19.8% of a business’ time, be it a startup or an established organization, is dedicated by employees towards information and knowledge gathering, in order to usher efficiency and excellence.

However, this is time-consuming and ineffectual in the long run – data records by IDC state that professionals take up roughly 30% of their average workday to research and gather information amidst time constraints. This process can be made a lot easier with the help of certain tools and platforms that aid collaboration and research. Let’s have a look into the same:

Survey Monkey

An online survey tool that allows one to easily create and distribute all kinds of forms for startups, ranging from NPS surveys to key user tests. Over 80% of Survey Monkey customers utilize it for entrepreneurial purposes in more than 190 countries. As this platform is natively integrated with 100+ apps, you can push form data back to your CRM, email marketing tool, or cloud spreadsheet.

Consumer Barometer

With the help of the dual sources of the Consumer Barometer Questionnaire and the Connected Consumer Study, this tool gathers data from around the world in order to furnish insight into vast data mines and knowledge banks. It also includes a graph-builder facility, which allows companies to create their own charts based on consumer shopping and multi-device behaviour. This can help garner staggering insights – for instance, did you know that 61% of individuals aged over 55 in Israel use smartphones for everyday activities? This kind of insight can prove to be an absolute game changer when cross-checking a segment’s mobile-centricity.

One can also use other research, survey, and targeting tools such as Facebook Audience Insights and Typeform to bolster multiple processes efficiently at the same time. This will not only save time and resources but also grant you with detailed demographic data that will help you craft laser-targeted audiences for various entrepreneurial purposes.

Also, collaboration is the key for success in the individual workplace or coworking space – a certain study revealed that collaborative teams persevered at tasks 64% longer than their solitary peers, bringing forth greater levels of engagement, emotional satisfaction, and entrepreneurial success. Collaboration can prove to be a task in bigger offices featuring varied cross-functional teams. Certain collaboration tools can help bridge geographical and social barriers and aid in:

• Document collaboration and management
• Maintaining shared calendars, excel sheets, and drives
• Quick yet significant interactions, status calls, feedback, and group conversations
• Synchronized processes and shared analytics

Some key collaboration and project management tools include:

Zoho Projects

As per PMI’s Pulse of the Profession 2018 survey, 93% of business organizations use standardized project management-cum-collaboration tools for improving outcomes and reducing added risks. Zoho Projects ensures timely project completion and increased productivity – the platform comes along with various features that improve monitoring and communication processes. Projects can not only be planned in advance but also be broken down into smaller tasks for convenience. Zoho also helps track down bugs and fixes them, while offering code-free customization and platforms for live brainstorming sessions. Reminder alerts can also be sent out to ensure the completion of priority tasks.

Slack

Slack is designed in a way to replace the hassle induced by long email-chains. A primary method of communication and sharing, it is an important collaboration tool that facilitates group discussions and private messages alike. When integrated with sister apps, Slack helps entrepreneurs manage entire workflows via a single platform. Over 8 million individuals use Slack worldwide, among which, 80% of users report an improvement in transparency and office culture, whereas 64% of users believe that it makes research quicker and easier. Slack can also be used to share and review all sorts of files – making work smooth and effortless!

Hence, to answer: can certain tools help entrepreneurs achieve excellence? Absolutely yes. Then on, one should only aim for the stars.