As every new business owner knows, choosing the right tools to service your business can be a confusing or onerous task. Setting up and connecting all the parts of your business admin can be time-consuming and complicated! Well, Google Workspace is the perfect solution for small businesses and all the features will grow with you as your business expands.
There are so many wonderful applications that sit within the Google Workspace, all of which connect beautifully together and allow you to easily share your work with collaborators and colleagues. We thought we would give you a rundown of the top 5 apps we use within the Google Workspace which really increase our productivity and we would be lost without.
Gmail is easy to use, has functionalities which work fantastically for a busy, time-short entrepreneur and offers you the opportunity to personalise and brand your email signature as you want to. Adding a business email address is simple. It’s always good practice to use a business email address (e.g hello@systemstogrow.com, rather than systemstogrow@gmail.com) – to show that you are an established business. It will match your website domain and reduce the risk of being marked as spam.
There’s the ability to schedule emails to send later and the opportunity to have an automated ‘holding’ email or ‘out of office’ email. You can even reply from multiple email addresses within one inbox and you can ‘file’ emails in more than one folder – which is really handy for things like expenses or memberships.
Drive
Your Google Drive is like your digital filing cabinet and as long as you have a formula to file things you will always be able to find your work quickly! The search feature will also save you time pulling up documents. You can easily buy affordable storage space if you need it and sharing files with your colleagues and clients is straightforward too!
Calendar
We live by our Google Calendars – if it’s not on the calendar then it’s unlikely to happen. We work by Time Blocking – a method which keeps you organised, focused and reduces the overwhelm! Google calendar is perfect for time blocking, it’s also easy to view and use on the phone app too. The added bonus is that your calendar can sync with any number of other digital tools – like Calendly, Zoom, ClickUp, Facebook events or Asana. So meetings and other commitments can be added to your calendar either automatically or with just one click! So easy!
Google Forms
If you are a professional services business and ask your clients to complete questionnaires for onboarding, feedback or information sharing then Google Forms are perfect for the job. You can add your own branding to them, they can be duplicated and edited quickly. Sharing the forms with clients is simple and the best part is that when the data is collated it is presented clearly.
Sheets
For your admin, budgets, projections, project work and more! Sheets is protected by a highly secure infrastructure and is compatible with Excel. It can be worked on ‘Live’ or you can even set the document so it can’t be copied or edited.
Special Mentions
We know we said we would share our Top 5 Google tools but a special mention has to be said for Google Slides and Google My Business. Google Slides are fantastic for presentations and webinars – and can be used with Canva (a graphic tool which is a small business’s answer to hiring a designer!). Google My Business is a feature which allows you to register your business (a bit like the digital version of the Yellow Pages) and add important information for your customers. You can even post regularly on GMB with your latest offers and news.
We recommend setting up Google Workspace as one of your top priorities when it comes to building the foundation of your business. The cost of Google Workspace is currently £4.14 a month – and this will be money well spent. We know that Google Workspace improves our productivity and makes collaborating with partners and clients easier. We are sure you’ll also see the benefits of this small investment.
Nina & Sarah xx
