What digital tools have you tapped into or invested in to assist with the management and growth of your company? How have these resources benefited your business, team, sales or goals?
Beth Kraemer
Co-Founder and Lead Consultant, In College Consulting
We developed a customized web app to facilitate our unique hybrid fee model. Like many college consulting firms, we charge a flat fee for advising services and overall assistance with the application process. However, we also wanted our fees to reflect the tremendous variance in the amount of work involved with applying to individual colleges, empowering clients to make informed and upfront decisions while allocating their resources. Hourly or per-school pricing models lack similar transparency, which unfortunately can create unpleasant surprises at the time of billing. Upon creating our fee structure, we needed to find a tech solution to effectuate it. Clients now use the web app (which we call the iCC Listbuilder and describe as a “cross between an Amazon cart and a sushi menu”) to build their college lists and pay the associated fees. On the back end, we use it to track data that informs our advising for future classes. Additionally, Zoom and other video conferencing tools have allowed us to build a team and serve clients extending from Maine to Hawaii and everywhere in between.
Ari Krzyzek
CEO & Head of Strategy, Chykalophia
Being a web agency ourselves, we use and have tried a variety of tools, apps and programs. There are several tools that stand out for our business operations, sales and project management, including Calendly, Salesmate and Plutio. Meeting or call scheduling is made easy with Calendly, whether it’s with clients, leads or partners. When we need a dedicated place to track our deals pipelines, Salesmate comes to our rescue. We track everything from our lead pipeline to our speaking deals pipeline to our grant opportunities pipeline. My sales team also benefits from the app being able to access all the emails associated with each deal. Last but not least, we use Plutio for project management; it is handy for all of our projects as it is linked to all proposals, contracts, and invoicing systems
Anabel Lopez
President & CEO, Cumberland Irving
QuickBooks Online and IBM Planning are two tools that allow me free time by getting the job done three times faster and with more accuracy. I upload weekly information to generate reports and status reviews to plan the following week and manage the current week’s activities. QuickBooks also allows me to do an online review with my accountant and assign items to them that I need guidance on. Instead of scheduling one-on-ones or meeting over Zoom, they can address my accounting questions quickly and at my pace and time. IBM Planning has allowed a collaboration of efforts between the team location across the USA. The Cloud-based product is easy to use and has replaced Excel spreadsheets for us. Now we update the virtual templates and receive immediate updates.