10 Best Business Apps for Entrepreneurs in 2020

Apps are a vital tool for every modern business. From managing work streams, time tracking and even keeping on top of your credit card payments and cash flow, there are a plethora to choose from. To help you along, we took the liberty of creating a shortlist of the top business apps available to entrepreneurs in 2020:

Flock

Best for: Remote working teams

Flock is a communication and collaboration tool that's vital for any business with remote workers. It organizes all of your conversations, productivity tools and apps in one place, along with providing video conferencing and audio conferencing functionality. You have the ability to drag and drop files into conversations and add 'guests' to specific chats - perfect if you want to loop clients into certain conversations without giving them access to the rest of your channels.

Oncourse

Best for: Managing sales

Oncourse is an all-in-one powerful CRM married to sales automation. As a sales acceleration platform, it can be used to keep all sales info in one place, which is great for managing data and devising data-driven strategies or sales tactics. It features an integrated set of tools designed to elevate sales effort and crush sales goals - think sales automation, email, SMS sequences and calling, all seamlessly running as one. Oncourse also has functionalities like activity tracking, recorded calls, team member segmentation, reply tracking, and more.

Bonjoro

Best for: Building your brand image

This app allows you to create and share personalized videos. It's a great way to add some personality to your brand image when nurturing sales leads, thanking buyers and donors, onboarding customers and checking in on existing clients. The design of the video and the background can be customized, so users can adjust these elements according to their brand. It's perfect to partner with business platforms like Kajabi, and can be integrated with existing tools like Gmail, Drip, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, Patreon etc.

Facebook Live

Best for: Customer engagement

Consumers respond very well to video content and live video in particular has boomed in the last couple of years. For good reason too; it's a great tool for connecting with your audience and building your brand image. Every time you live stream, your target audience can interact with you and engage with your content in real time. Unlike Facebook messenger, Facebook Live doesn’t have its own separate app yet. You’ll have to install the Facebook app to access Facebook Live (granted that Facebook itself is a good app for business on its own). But, with 93.7% of businesses using Facebook, this one's a must if you want to keep up with competitors.

Brainshark

Best for: Training sales teams

Brainshark is a sales readiness platform that prepares client-facing teams and helps them operate at their best. The top-of-the-line solutions for training, coaching, content (and more) equips your sales team with the skills and knowledge that they would need to get the most out of client interactions and selling situations. It's a must if you manage a startup that's got a growing sales team.

Rocketbook

Best for: Creatives & visual thinkers

This app started as a Kickstarter project, and is perfect for small business owners who may want to sketch out ideas by hand and then access them on screen, such as designers or web developers. After jotting down ideas or sketching plans, you can use your phone to scan the pages of the notebook. Scanning is lightning fast and you can share images with your teammates on designated apps (Asana, DropBox, etc.) with a tap or two. The app is good for producing clean files as it scans only your handwriting and nothing else. It won’t include 'photo bombers' like the edge of the notebook or the table where the notebook rests on.

Asana

Best for: Project management & team collaboration

Speaking of Asana...as your business grows and you take on more staff, it's always worth investing in a project management app, or an app that helps you keep on top of your team's task lists. It's also a great option if you want a productivity app that can help keep you and your team focused on the most important tasks when things get busy. Asana allows you to easily create workstreams and projects, breaking work into tasks and subtasks, with the ability to assign tasks to users. You can create custom fields, filter information in a manner synonymous with spreadsheet columns, add due dates, due times and even 'vote' for tasks with 'likes'. It's the one-stop-shop for effective team and project management.

UpWork

Best for: Startups with fluctuating workloads

Small business owners all know what it feels like to have too much work and not enough time. If you need extra hands, you can outsource work to the remote workers at Upwork. Be it virtual assistants, graphic artists, voice talents, video editors - there will always be someone who is more than willing to lend a helping hand. As an employer, you can create one-time projects or recurring contracts. The freelancers will bid on these projects and you can review their proposal to find out which candidate would fit your purpose best. Hiring can be as fast and easy as you want. Payment is secure and you can make sure to get your money’s worth through Upwork’s Timeproof software. This means you can spend your time growing your business and getting new clients.

Google Drive

Best for: Businesses juggling lots of files & data

Google Drive made our list of 2019's top business apps, and it's back again this year. If you're looking for a reliable cloud based storage for your files, look no further. The days of lost files are all but over as Google Drive can now backup any folder on your computer. The free version is a great starting point, but Drive Enterprise for business is also worth looking at if you want additional enterprise-grade security and management tools.

Zapier

Best for: Businesses relying on lots of apps

The number of apps you're using to manage your business can get a bit overwhelming at times, and it's not uncommon to wish they could just interact with each other. Zapier makes this interaction possible by offering workflows 'zaps' that make apps work with each other so that you can share files and data across them. An example of a popular Zap would be 'Add new Facebook Lead Ads leads to rows on Google Sheets'. If a new lead is gained through Facebook, it will be automatically added to Google Sheets. This tool is super handy as you can explore hundreds of ways to automate your work and make managing your business even easier!

If you enjoyed our list of the best business apps in 2020, take a look at our roundup of the top 2020 podcasts for business owners.