The Best Subscription Services to Help Your Business Succeed!

As an adventurous business owner, you understand the importance of balance and efficiency in both your personal and professional life. To ensure your business thrives while leaving plenty of time available for your passions outside of work, incorporating the right subscription-based services is crucial!

With so many different subscription services to choose from – how do you know which ones are the best? Well, you’re in luck because we have done the legwork and provided a list of the best subscription services to help your business be more efficient and maximize your time and efforts. We will take time to explore the different services available that you may already be familiar with, but we will also include some more boutique subscription services that can be tailored specifically to your business.

Below are 6 subscription services that you should be considering for your business:

1. Project Management Platforms: Even if your business doesn’t have huge year-long projects, utilizing a project management system can help with internal projects that take longer than a few weeks. For us at Executive Allies, these projects have been things like revamping our company branding, creating training processes and programs for staffing, evaluating different technology tools for our clients’ use, and planning our annual team meeting! If efficient business operations and collaboration are needed in your business, consider the following SaaS platforms:

• • Trello: If you have a remote or hybrid team that spends a lot of time working in different locations and at different times (ahem, asynchronously), Trello is perfect as it provides a clear view of who is doing what and what needs to get done. It will help with your project management and the pricing is affordable but can also scale to enterprise levels. If you are a list lover, Trello is great solution.
  • Monday.com: Monday has the ability to organize your team's workload to help with that work-life balance that can feel so elusive and make sure every team member knows what to do. You can even set milestones and dependencies to identify hang-ups early on! From a financial standpoint, a system like Monday can even help you track and recognize revenue on a percentage-of-completion basis. The project tracking will make your life (and your accountant's life!) less complicated and provide great data for you to use in tracking each project's profitability. The color coding and user interface is an added bonus making Monday a very visual and easy to use system.

2. Cloud Computing Services: If your business provides Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), you know that having the best cloud infrastructure is paramount as this is the basis for what you create and provide to your end users! Having seamless access to your business data and resources from anywhere is foundational to your company and to your investors.
   
   There are not any huge surprises here as there are two main players in this field, but it is still good to compare your options with these leading cloud computing services. Both products provide computation, have massive storage available that is both secure and efficient, networking with multiple data centers to ensure load balancing, app deployment, and overall database implementation. Below, we will focus on the differences to help you make an informed decision:

• • Amazon Web Services (AWS): Flexibility is the main difference with AWS as it offers more features, configurations, and overall customization. However, this usually will require third-party involvement for the different integrations. Users can also configure their own virtual machines with AWS whereas Azure users will need to use a virtual hard disk which will likely need to be configured by a third party.
  • Microsoft Azure: As Azure is a Microsoft product, it will likely have a sense of familiarity as it is a Windows platform and can be easy to integrate for your specific needs. In addition, Azure’s pricing model is more exact as it charges per minute vs. AWS charges per hour.
    
    *Full disclaimer on this comparison – we have clients on each of these platforms but we have not used them in our own business so the information above is anecdotal only.

3. Customer Relationship Management Systems: With the business world flattening as consumers are using services and buying products from all over the world, providing exceptional customer interactions is crucial from the very first moment a potential customer clicks a link on your website. Keeping track of these clicks and the interactions that follow will mean the difference between a new customer or a potential customer that falls through the cracks.

• • HubSpot CRM: With HubSpot CRM, you will have an up-to-the-minute view of your entire sales funnel with the fantastic dashboards available. HubSpot CRM can automatically sync with your email, social media, and call system so you don’t have to update information in multiple places. Data on each lead is stored easily with visual timelines to easily track your last connection with your new relationships.
  • Zoho CRM: Zoho is not necessarily a new player in the CRM game but is not quite as well known as Hubspot or Salesforce in the United States (as they are based in India). Similar to Hubspot, Zoho will collect, store and centralize customer relationship data to help provide context when interacting with those customers or making business decisions. It can also analyze past customer relationships to help make improvements in the customer relationship building process. The data that is aggregated can then provide insights on the best times to follow up with potential customers and make recommendations based on prior interactions and purchase history information.
    • We had the ability to connect with the Zoho team at the Woodard Conference early this summer and were very impressed with their suite of products, Their product offering is so robust that they don't really have a direct competitor when you consider all the products they have to offer. Zoho is the company that would be created if Microsoft, Quickbooks, and SalesForce had a baby - pretty comprehensive!

4. Marketing Automation Tools: Spreading the word about your business should be easy, right? You tell all your friends that you started a business and post on social media that you are now open and the calls and DMs flood in! Well, maybe for some, but that was not the case for us. This is an area where we are continuing to learn and grow but here are the services that have helped us so far!

• • Hubspot: Hubspot is the lucky winner that made it onto our list twice! Once you have had success in getting people to interact with your website and social media posts, Hubspot can help you automate your inbound marketing, email campaigns, and social media with HubSpot's all-in-one marketing platform. We even built our website using Hubspot’s platform which makes the data aggregation that much easier.
  • Meet Edgar: Meet Edgar is a subscription service that automates your social media posting. Believe it or not, the influencers you love on Instagram are likely not posting the minute you see it come into your feed. That post was likely scheduled or (*gasp*) may even be repurposed content from their feed from 6 months ago! A social media management tool can help you create, schedule, and automate content so you can focus on the work you actually love to do! Meet Edgar will also track your posts to help you better understand how your audience engages with your content.

5. E-Commerce Platforms: The e-commerce platform you ultimately decide to use becomes the face of your business to all your customers. You want to put your best foot forward so this is an important decision!

• • Shopify:With Shopify, you can create a stunning online store and manage your products effortlessly with Shopify's user-friendly interface. You can also sell in other places, such as brick and mortar locations, pop-up shops, social media, and other online marketplaces which makes this platform very flexible. It also fully integrates easily with BookKeep (an accounting app that integrates with QuickBooks Online) so tracking your sales is a breeze.
  • Square: Square offers the same ability to build and run an online storefront and it offers many tools to customize this to your business needs. One main difference that Square provides, is that it can be available with an offline POS making it a more comprehensive e-commerce solution.
    
    Between the two, the pricing is slightly different with base costs and processing fees so when evaluating the services, be sure to calculate the all-in cost to make an accurate comparison.
    
    *Full disclaimer on this comparison – We are not an e-commerce company, so again, this information above is anecdotal only.

• • Officevibe: With Officevibe, employee engagement is tracked with a simple survey that your team can complete each week. The surveys take about one minute to complete and will help you keep a pulse on how your employees are feeling about their work. The results are then aggregated to show where engagement is thriving and where there is opportunity for improvement. In addition to the surveys, team members can give each other "Good Vibes", which are little badges with specific feedback. Giving them out is fun and receiving them just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. 

Now, we would be remiss if we left out our very favorite subscription-based product - accounting services!! That means, you get a bonus 7th recommendation - it's your lucky day! (We're not saying you should go out and buy a lotto ticket, but we are also NOT not saying you should do that - luck tends to run in streaks.)

7. Subscription Based Accounting Services: Accounting can be the bane of a business owners' existence. There are always issues with payroll, some type of reporting requirement that comes at the worst time, and most business owners don't have a degree in accounting or finance so can feel uncertain about the quality of the financial information that gets sent to them each month. Not to mention the high rate of turnover as accounting professionals are becoming more and more in short supply. All of these concerns make it necessary to have an accounting team you can be confident in!

• • Executive Allies: Of course we are biased, but at Executive Allies, we help businesses succeed by understanding your vision and passion for your business. Our premium accounting services are tailor-made to support your specific business and set you up for long-term success. By partnering with Executive Allies, you gain access to professional financial expertise, strategic financial planning, and meticulous bookkeeping—all while you focus on the areas of your business that drive growth and are areas where your expertise is best utilized. With our subscription-based accounting service, you don't have to worry about employee turnover or your accountant going on vacation or leave. Our team provides continuous coverage and have extensive experience in accounting, giving you the confidence to make informed decisions, achieve financial clarity, and navigate the complexities of accounting with ease, freeing up more time for what truly matters to you.

There is so much to consider when evaluating what subscription services are needed for your business! With these essential subscription services on your side, and with Executive Allies on your team, there's nothing stopping you from achieving the perfect harmony between entrepreneurial success and having time leftover to pursue life’s adventures. From building efficiencies, to having knowledge at your fingertips when you need it, having the right tools in place can provide a peace of mind that you have only dreamed about!

Ready to take your business to new heights? Contact us now to partner with Executive Allies for premium accounting services and embark on a journey to unparalleled success! 🚀