How to Improve Business Agility in Pandemic Times
Ever after the lockdown was announced, all our customers started calling with basically the same request: we need to move to remote work now.
Most small businesses weren’t ready for this pandemic and the struggle that came along with it.
The good news is that we were able to rapidly act and help them stay operative and efficient.
However, we know small businesses need more than just the correct infrastructure.
To ensure that we are doing everything in our power to mitigate the problem, we decided to compile a list of resources to help them figure out:
- How to manage their teams
- What tools to use and
- How to stay informed of what’s happening out there.
Collaboration and empathy will be the values that’ll push us forward.
So we decided to share this list with everyone that needs it.
Including you!
Additionally, you can contact us for a FREE one hour IT consultation to brainstorm the best solutions depending on your needs.
We are determined to help you and your team endure, and even grow, no matter what.
With that said, let’s get to it, shall we?
3 key things every small business needs right now
50 Resources to help you scale in times of crisis
We spent a little bit more than 30 hours reviewing websites, articles, guides, podcasts, videos, and tools.
After all that work, these are the resources that we considered are the best to put your business back on track.
Don’t worry, we’ll keep updating this page at least twice a month.
Hope you find what you need and more. Enjoy!
Transition to remote collaboration
These are the best guides to help you move your processes and teams to remote collaboration in no time, without losing efficiency.
- The ultimate guide to remote work by Zapier – The team at Zapier built a comprehensive guide that covers remote team collaboration, how managers can work with a distributed workforce, how to use automation to improve remote collaboration efficiency and so much more.
- Cloud Migration Roadmap by Digisoft Cloud – In this complete guide we cover the benefits of moving your processes to the cloud, how to make a successful and frictionless transition, and how to do it for free using our services.
- Zoom COVID-19 Training Resources – This site focuses on helping you most effectively use Zoom during the coronavirus pandemic. We especially like the section about “hosting live events” and “telehealth”.
- Zoom Security and Privacy – Video from dottotech on how to protect your conferences yourself while zoom improves their security measures.
- Team Playbooks by Trello – On this page, you’ll find all the use cases for Trello depending on the nature of your team. Some categories are engineering, team management, marketing and 10 more.
- Online Recruiting Guide by Glassdoor – This is a list of 25 online recruiting tools and strategies to help your HR teamwork more efficient and effective to cover your talent needs.
- Strategies for Team Collaboration by Hubspot – List of 12 crucial strategies for promoting team collaboration (plus tools and a downloadable company culture guide)
- How to Manage a Remote Sales Team by Pipedrive – It’s a five minutes read with actionable tips to manage your distributed sales team.
- The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing by Hubspot – We strongly believe that in times like the ones we are facing, content marketing we’ll be your best customer acquisition channel. Read the guide carefully and start creating.
- Productivity: The Ultimate Guide by JotForm – In this guide, the JetForm’s team digs into major ideas about productivity and provides tips to help you become more productive.
Don’t forget about the tools
Yes, you’ll need tools. No, they won’t break the bank.
These are some of the best tools we can recommend to make your life easier and your team happier.
- Basecamp – If you are looking for a centralized place for your team to collaborate, share files and keep everyone in the loop, while reducing management time, then Basecamp is the project management software you were looking for. It doesn’t have video conference capabilities so you’ll need something else for it.
- Trello – When you need to streamline entire processes, Trello is actually the best solution so far. It uses boards and cards you can customize, assign to team members and moving between columns.
- Aló Cloud – Your business needs to stay in communication with your customers and potential customers. Aló Cloud is a VoIP solution for businesses that need to keep their business number, customer support team and sales team working, no matter if they are in the office or on the go. Some special features are 1) unlimited local and long-distance calling (no extra charge), 2) auto-attendant receptionist and 3) no extra hardware needed.
- Zoom – It is one of the most affordable and used video conferencing tool right now. Most of its popularity comes from the fact that it works really well even in a slow internet connection.
- Slack – When it comes to internal communication, slack can not be bitten. This tool organizes all communication in channels, keeping conversations, files, links, and anything that gets shared, at reach.
- Talk.to – A totally free live chat software that integrates with your website and gives you full control.
- H3O Cloud – A big problem that our businesses are facing is that our teams don’t have access to their computers, causing files to be lost or duplicated, compatibility and performance issues, and accessibility issues to core applications. H3O takes care of all those issues by giving remote access to an entire centralized desktop computer to everyone in your team.
- ConceptBoard – Brainstorming is an essential part to find solutions, design creative assets and choose strategies. ConceptBoad is a whiteboard application that works directly on the browser, so there’s no need for installment and it provides real-time collaboration, letting all your team add ideas to the canvas.
- Discord – We know what you are thinking: “Isn’t that for video games?”. Although Discord got popular in the gaming community, actually anyone can use it in the way they please. It functions similar to slack in the sense that you can host servers that act as channels for your different conversations, everything is encrypted and you can host video conferences for up to 50 team members. Best part? It is totally free.
- CloudBox – Your desktop version of QuickBooks on the cloud. Pretty self-explanatory, right?
- X.ai – For larger teams that need to schedule a lot of meetings, stay in touch through emails or schedule demo presentations with potential customers, x.ai is an AI that connects with all your calendars and coordinates the best time to meet with your guests.
- Clockify – Simple time tracker and timesheet app that lets you and your team track work hours across projects. Unlimited users, free forever.
Stay updated on the coronavirus status
Don’t trust anything you read on social media.
These are the best online news outlets: starting with the World Health Organization if you want to know accurate statistics and advice.
- World Health Organization – Official page of the World Health Organization dedicated to the coronavirus disease pandemic.
- Coronavirus, Vox Covering – Vox and Verge Science explains what you need to know about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Video playlist.
- Vox.com/coronavirus-covid19 – Evidence-based explanations of the coronavirus crisis, from how it started to how it might end to how to protect yourself and others.
- Vice News, Coronavirus Coverage – VICE News wants you to stay safe and informed with updates on the spread of the coronavirus. They update the list with new reports on a daily basis. Video playlist.
Business and finance
This is a really good time to educate yourself and to pay attention to what’s happening to the economy right now.
We need to work more on this section but here are some of our best findings.
- Forbes – List of coronavirus small business loan and grant programs. The team at Forbes keeps the list up to date as more federal, state and local program details become available.
- Interview with David Dodson at CNBC – David Dodson, small business advisor and professor of management at Stanford University, joins “Squawk Alley” to discuss the federal small business loan program as Congress works to approve more funds.
- SBA – Coronavirus (COVID-19): small business guidance and loan resources
- The Warning Of Hyper Inflation – Video by Graham Stephan on how the $2 Trillion stimuli could impact the US economy.
- Ray Dalio’s TedTalk – Ray Dalio offers wide-ranging insight and advice on how we might recover from the global economic fallout of the coronavirus crisis, and use it as an opportunity to reform the systems that help grow our economy.
- Bill Gates’s TedTalk – Bill Gates offers insights into the COVID-19 pandemic, discussing why testing and self-isolation are essential, which medical advancements show promise and what it will take for the world to endure this crisis.
- The Morning Brew – Newsletter that covers the latest news from Wall Street to Silicon Valley every morning.
- New $250 Billion Stimulus – While the Payment Protection Program is apparently underfunded, the Senate is working on another possible $2 Trillion Stimulus, with potentially more free money coming.
Learn from podcasts
Podcasts are a great source of inspiration, ideas, and strategies. To grow your business in these times, you need to focus on digital platforms.
- Entrepreneurs on Fire – Award-winning podcast hosted by John Lee Dumas, where he interviews inspiring Entrepreneurs that are willing to share their stories, strategies and knowledge.
- Social Media Marketing Podcast – This podcast has been a top-10 marketing podcast for the last seven years. you’ll discover success stories and expert interviews from leading social media marketing pros in a weekly 45-minute podcast.
- The Pitch – It is an American podcast from Gimlet Media hosted by Josh Muccio. The show features entrepreneurs in need of venture funding as they pitch to a live panel of investors, similar to ABC’s hit TV series Shark Tank.
- Business Wars – In this podcast, the team at Wondery tells the unauthorized story of the most famous brand battles in history. Nintendo vs Sony is a team’s favorite.
- Recur Now – Unlike the other four we are recommending, these ones are shorter (most episodes are 5 minutes long) and are focused on the subscription industry – especially SaaS. If you don’t want to provide your email to subscribe to the newsletter, you can also find them on Google and Apple podcast.
Learn from YouTube Channels
These YouTube channels are especially useful for marketing, investment, and productivity.
- Dumb Money – In this show, Chris Camillo, Dave Hanson, and Jordan Mclain – 3 good friends who sold their tech startup and decided to quit their day jobs – share their experiences as investors in a little of everything: early-stage startups, pre-IPO companies, public equities, real estate, and even a couple of local restaurant/bars.
- Slidebean – The team behind the free cloud-based presentation tool (Slidebean) shares the stories behind failed startups, strategies to get funds and how to build your pitch deck.
- Blogging for Business Course by Ahrefs – Learn how to grow your blog past 100K monthly visitors and turn thousands of your readers into paying customers. We pick this one as we think you should be focusing on creating content more than ever to market your business.
- Brian Dean – The channel was created by Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko and author of the skyscraper technique. Every video is focused on SEO and matches perfectly the blogging for business course.
- Matt D’Avella – In his channel, Matt talks about productivity, minimalism and good habits. His tips are extremely useful when your office is your home.
And don’t forget to have fun
Entertainment is a vital element to keep your mind sharp. Don’t ever forget that enjoyment is what life is about.
- Audiotree – Listen to impressive indie bands before they get famous.
- The Verge – High production videos made by a team of journalists that examines how technology will change life in the future.
- Imagined Life – Each episode of this podcast, guides you on an immersive journey through the surprising moments and challenges that shaped someone’s life before they were famous.
- Wisecrack – This YouTube channel explores big ideas like philosophy and critical thinking through the lens of movies, TV shows, video games, current events, books, and more.
- Serious Eats – Learn to prepare new dishes and have fun in the kitchen.
- Economics Explained – If you like economics then you’ll love this channel. Here the creator takes a look at interesting countries, policies, and decisions from the point of view of an economist. Plus, sometimes even the economy of fictional worlds.
Thanks so much for reading our resource page!
We truly hope you have found something useful.
But if you didn’t, please let us know what problems are you facing or what resources were you looking for.
We’ll make sure to send you our best answer and to update this page.
You can also leave any questions on the comment below. We’ll answer each one of them.
Until next time, have an amazing day![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
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