Business Operation Tools
File Management and Storage
There are several solutions for storing your files, please look for a ‘cloud’ solution and do not rely on hardware such as external hard drives, or just simply storing to your computer hard drive. If you hard drive gets corrupt or damaged your files are gone forever. If you have a ‘cloud’ storage solution such as Google Drive or MS OneDrive, you will be able to retrieve your files from any computer.
Google Drive
Google Drive is a cloud based storage solution, it allows you to save files online and access them anywhere from any smartphone, tablet or computer. You can securely upload files and edit them online as well as share and collaborate on files.
Google Drive has it’s own set of applications for editing different document types – Google Sheets is the MS Excel equivalent, Google Docs is the MS Word and Google Slides is their alternative to MS Powerpoint for presentations.
The big advantage to Google Drive is the storage and the use of the applications is free, up to a point!
NB: you can store and work on MS Office files in Google drive.
Microsoft OneDrive
OneDrive is the Microsoft version of cloud-based storage, similar to Google Drive. You are able to upload, edit and collaborate on documents but with the more familiar versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
You will need to purchase a Microsoft 365 package, this will allow up to 5 people to use all the MS Office applications mentioned above and provides 1TB of cloud-based file storage.
Time/Project Management Tools
Again, there are many available (Monday, Asana, Clickup etc.) but we are recommending Trello as this is a free tool, the free version is more than capable of managing the several projects we run collaberatively.
Trello
Trello is the tool we use to manage our day-to-day tasks and projects.
You can run a Trello “board” with one or more members added to your team, allowing you to collaborate on projects or manage the day-to-day running of your business. It can be customised to suit the way you work and is similar to a series of post-it notes stuck to a whiteboard.
You can leave comments, add cards for other members of the team, set up checklists, add customisable labels, and more. There are also “Powerups” that allow a huge variety of integrations and additional customisations.
We have several boards on the go at one time, the “Powerup” we use is called “Card Repeater”, which pops repeated tasks into a specific list automatically each week.
There are many other tools similar to Trello such as Asana, Monday.com, Taskworld, Quickbase – the list goes on!
Video Storage
The tool you choose to store videos you produce will depend on the type of usage.
YouTube
YouTube is a video sharing platform. It can be a valuable tool for small business marketing and information videos for clients, by creating a YouTube channel for your business you will be providing a centralised platform for your audience to view and engage with your videos.
We use YouTube to share information videos for clients, such as Hand Expressing, the Tongue-tie assessment process, aftercare exercises and more.
Vimeo
Vimeo is a similar tool to YouTube, a video sharing platform. Vimeo has a significantly smaller user base than YouTube.
The advantage to Vimeo is they have a more robust privacy setup. We use Vimeo for videos we produce that require additional security to limit views to our chosen audience. Our main use is for the courses we run and live tutorial videos that require the additional privacy options available on the Vimeo platform.