Software Tools for Boutique Consultants (2024)
- February 11, 2024
- Posted by: SCES Consulting, LLC
- Categories: Quality Management, Quality Training, Software Consulting, Software Technology
As a small, boutique consulting firm, we are always concerned with time management and how to get the most (productive) hours out of a day. Here’s our list of go to and must-have software tools:
- Project Tools
- Hive (Project Management)
- Microsoft OneNote (Read further to see what this is being replaced with)
- Sublime Text (Advanced Text Editor)
- Training Tools
- Everyday Productivity Tools
- Slack (Free and Paid Communication Tool for Groups)
- Notion Calendar (NEW Tool from the Notion Team!)
- Nord VPN (Paid VPN Tool)
Project Tools:
Hive has been a go to Project Management tool for us. Our consultancy relies on several things; our relation ship with our partners, and our organic projects. Hive lets us create templates for both. I have a Project Navigator where I can see everything for our team, assignments, due dates, action items, and change the project layout at will. What I love about Hive is that each week, I get an update showing everything new in the tool. Consistent updates and enhancements make this tool so beneficial; to our group.
Microsoft OneNote has been my Project Management tool for over 15 years. I’ve used it consistently, simply because I have gotten comfortable with it’s layout and functionality. For the past year, i’ve mostly used it for meeting minutes and working sessions with customers, since I could grab screenshots of errors, logs, etc.., and dump it quickly into OneNote.
That doesn’t make it the best option, which is why we are currently transitioning to Notion. Notion has all the necessary tools to handle exactly what OneNote is doing for us, and much more. It’s possible that Notion could become our overall go-to Project Management tool by next year.
Sublime Text is fairly new to me, as I’ve used Notepad ++ for many years. Our company partners with several software vendors, and we have to update or write script quite often. What I love about Sublime is reference calls. I can include a method or function, and it will reference all of that method or function in my files. This is great for small scripts that I don’t use often, and need to look up another one to ensure it’s written correctly. Sublime is extremely user friendly, and the theme options are fantastic.
Training Tools:
Camtasia is our go to tool for create video training for customers. We work extensively with custom and/or configured software applications. Our customers need something long-term to deliver to their employees, and Camtasia delivers, we can screencast training sessions and record them, then upload for our customer. Camtasia creates a very professional video, and we can include animations, slides, cut sections, and much more. It’s certainly not a cheap (price) tool, but it’s extremely professional.
Audiate is a new tool from the makers of Camtasia (TechSmith). Audiate allows you to type your text, edit and remove audio, splice audio, and use AI voices (if you aren’t very confident with using your own). You can create very professional voices, add jingle snippets where needed in a very professional sounding format. Similar to Camtasia, Audiate is not cheap, but sometimes TechSmith will run bundle specials for Camtasia/Audiate together. Check it out.
We use Canva from marketing slides, to one pagers for conferences and seminars, to add in’s for Camtasia (see above). Canva is reasonably priced, and has alot of free templates that you can start from.
Snagit is a tool from the makers of Camtasia and Audiate. It’s a great tool for grabbing print screen when building training documents, sending mock ups to customers, or showing a customer how to get somewhere or to do something. It has a host of tools built in, so you can number parts of the screen grab, then call those out as steps, arrows to point to things, boxes, circles, you name it. Snagit is a paid tool, but has a suite of great features. If you are looking for a FREE tool with many of the same features as Snagit…
Greenshot is very similar to Snagit, but it is free. I’ve been using Greenshot for over 10 years. The functionality and enhancements come at a slower pace than Snagit, but for a free solution, it has some great features. It has callout boxes, numbering, arrows, boxes, circles, everything I mentioned above about Snagit. Oh, did I mention, it’s free?
Everyday Tools for Productivity:
Slack. Who hasn’t heard of Slack? We use Slack daily. Hourly. Most of our partners use it and grant us access to their account, which allows us to stay in communication with them while working projects. We can create private channels that allow us to keep projects organized and the team members exclusive to the project. The only downside to Slack is when you are trying to get things done, but you are continually being pinged. Just set notifications to snooze if this happens.
Notion Calendar is a very new tool for us, as Notion released this pretty recently. What I love is that it’s organized for multiple calendars, and links to Teams meetings or Zoom meetings do not get lost (we’ve had issues with some links to meetings being removed). What else can I say? It’s a calendar.
NordVPN is a VPN tool that has been around for quite a while. Several of our partners require that we use VPN services while working with their customers. NordVPN is pretty inexpensive. I’ve had more issues with the service recently, but i’m hoping those will be worked out with a few new releases.
Well, that’s about it. We try not to change in and out of applications too often, as it takes a considerable amount of time to adapt to something new, and learn it.
See something I missed or any ideas that we should try out? Drop me an email or leave it in the comments. Thanks for listening!