This document discusses top apps for small businesses and tips for choosing the best apps. It begins by outlining 5 types of apps: 1) accounting, finances, payroll, taxes; 2) recruiting, onboarding, HR; 3) time and expense tracking; 4) payment processing and billing; 5) internal and external communication. It then provides tips for "dating" apps before committing, such as not rushing into marriage with the first app and establishing your workflow needs first. Finally, it highlights top recommended apps for small businesses: Trello, Canva, Note, Feedly, and IFTTT.

1. Top 5 Apps for Small Business
And Tips for Picking the Best Apps for You!
Photo by Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash.

2. Laura Kinnard, MBA with Internet
Marketing Specialty
Kinnard obtained her MBA from the
Florida Institute of Technology and has
an Advertising Management/Marketing degree
from Drake University.
Professor Kinnard teaches Marketing,
Entrepreneurship and Management at Drake
University and Des Moines Area Community
College.
Entrepreneurial Fellow for Drake advises the
Student Startup ‘Hatchery’ and the visiting
Mandela Washington Young African Leaders.

3. Every Company is a
Technology Company

4. “Every company is a technology company,
no matter what product or service it
provides. The companies that embrace this
fact are the ones that shape our world.”
– Stephenie Stone, CIO Americas at M+W Group, a global high tech design/construction firm
Jan 23, 2017: Why Every Company Is A Technology Company - Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/01/23/why-every-company-is-a-technology-company/#2e2630457aec

5. What’s An App?
1) In information technology an application program, also just called an application
or app for short, is the use of a technology system or product.
2) Apps are designed to perform a specific function directly for the user or for
another application program. Examples: word processors, database programs,
Web browsers, development tools, image editing programs, communication
programs, and mobile apps.
3) Apps use the services of the computer's operating system and other supporting
applications. Formal requests and means of communicating with other programs
an app needs to use is called the application program interface (API).

6. What’s a
Technology
‘Stack’?
Technology Stack: A technology stack, or
'tech stack,' is a list of all the technology
services used to run an application, including
back end and front end components.
Marketing Technology (MarTech) Stack: A
marketing technology stack is a grouping of
technologies that marketers leverage to
conduct and improve their marketing activities.
Often, the focus of marketing technologies is
to make difficult processes easier, and to
measure the impact of marketing activities and
drive more efficient spending.

7. Small Business Tech Stack
Whether you’re growing your team or flying solo, small business
owners are notorious for being short on time, resources, and hands
on deck.
You’re serious about seeing your vision come to life, so you have to
make the most you can with what you’ve got - and that means
leveraging the best free and affordable tools out there.
The Small Business Tech Stack: 27 Tools For Success https://www.littletokyotwo.com/blog/best-technology-for-small-business

8. What’s In Your Small
Business Tech ‘Stack’?

9. Do You Deploy
Digital Technologies
In Marketing?
“Digital marketing is a
broad term that refers
to various and
different promotional
techniques deployed
to reach customers via
digital technologies.” -
Technopedia.com

10. MARKETING DEFINED

11. MARKETING TECHNOLOGY STACK
François-Xavier Cuissot - Digital Project Manager - hello@fxcuissot.com - www.fxcuissot.com
Analysis &
Activation Data Visualisation Attribution
Analysis, Prediction
& Modelization
BackOffice
CMS DMP
Entreprise data
Warehouse (EDW)
CRM BackOffice Stack
ETL (Extract-
Transform-Load)
Experience &
Clickstream
Mobile App A/B & MVT testing
User experience &
VOC
Web & Apps
Analytics
Personalization Tag Management
Web & Mobile Web
E-Commerce
Engine
Marketing &
Advertising
Search Advertising Display Advertising Social Media
Email & Marketing
Automation
Content Marketing Retargeting

13. Types of
Apps for
Your Small
Business
Tech Stack
1) Accounting, finances, payroll, taxes
2) Recruiting, onboarding, and HR
3) Time and expense tracking
4) Payment processing and billing
5) Internal and external communication
6) Project management and collaboration
7) Time management and productivity
8) Sales lead and customer management
9) Marketing and advertising
10) Creativity and design
10

14. And Things to
Think about
Before Getting
Married to One
Top App
‘Dating’ Tips

15. Don’t marry the first
app you meet
– Instead Date a Few Before
You Decide!
1

16. Don’t rush to ditch or get
hitched to an app, either.
There are many things you’ll need to discover about an app during a
trial period. You may love an app right away or only after you get to
know it. (How I came to love Twitter, especially with Hootsuite)
And you may come to hate an app once you realize it doesn’t get
along well with the other technologies in your life.
2

17. Think Twice Before
Getting Married To
An App That’s Too Young
and Too Broke
(AKA – My Springboard Heartbreak!)
3

18. Feedly
organize, read
and share
what matters
to you. Perfect
your Content
Marketing
Strategy.
Feedly is a news aggregator application for various web browsers and
mobile devices running iOS and Android. Include Knowledge ‘Boards’
for saving and organization articles. Connect Feedly with IFTTT to
Email, Time & Date, Pocket, Evernote, Buffer, Tumblr, Email, Twitter,
Facebook Pages, Bitly and more.

19. IFTTT (if this,
then that) –
The Internet
doesn’t
always play
nice, but
we’re here to
help.
IFTTT (if this, then that) is the free way to get all your apps and
devices talking to each other: “we're on a mission to build a more
connected world.” A web-based service, IFTTT, creates chains of
simple conditional statements, or ‘recipies’ called applets. Another
option is Zapier.com where you create ‘zaps.’

20. You can’t make a
decision about an app
you didn’t actually date.
4
Don’t start an app trial until you really have the time to.
But if you feel the engagement was just too short, ask if the trial
can be extended or if you can take it one month at a time for a
while before committing.

21. It’s okay to fall in love
with a no-frills app that
helps you do one thing
better and makes your life a
little easier.
(My love affair with Note by Squarespace)
5

22. Squarespace
Note
is a Stunning,
Minimally
Elegant
Notepad for
Android and
iPhone.
The Squarespace Note App lets you capture your thoughts on the
go. Whenever you have an idea, make a note and send it to your
email, your Squarespace Blog Page, or other connected services.

23. Decide what you need in an
app before getting serious.6Selecting an app that compliments your strengths or makes up for
your weaknesses is important, but don’t let picking the perfect app
paralyze moving forward in your business.
Don’t feel like you have to get serious about an app just for all the
integrations it has to offer for the future – that you don’t really
know if you need.

24. Establishing a work flow
will help you know what
adding a little tech to your
life could do and what you’re
really longing for in an app.
(Why I can’t live without Trello)
7

25. Trello
is a fun &
flexible way to
get more
done.
A visual,
easy-to-use
productivity
platform.
Infinitely flexible, the web-based project management application
has 30+ App Integrations and syncs across all devices. Trello helps
individuals and teams keep track of the big picture to the minute
details. 20 million people use Trello to prioritize tasks and projects.

26. Canva
empowers the
world to design.
Design
anything.
Publish
anywhere.
Canva is a graphic-design tool website, also available on as an iOS
and Android mobile application. It uses a drag-and-drop format and
provides access to over a million photographs, graphics, and fonts.
It is used by non-designers as well as professionals.

27. Just because you got engaged, doesn’t mean you have to go through
with the marriage. You shouldn’t be forced to stick with a bad app to
avoid losing information its holding hostage.
Don’t invest hours entering new client profiles to test a customer
relationship management (CRM) system until you know you can
easily download your data if you decide the app isn’t for you.
Breaking up with an app
shouldn’t be hard to do.8

28. Be careful about automatic
renewals and be sure you
know how to break up with
an app at the end of a trial.
(Warning! Dear John letter required)
9

29. G2Crowd: Compare the best business software and services
based on user ratings and social data. https://www.g2crowd.com/
Capterra: Helps millions of people find the best business software.
https://www.capterra.com/
Use ‘App’ Matching
Sites10

30. Find New ‘App’ Prospects
VB Profiles: Discover, contribute to, and create industry topics,
organizations, companies, and people. Become a part of the
new business information community.
https://www.vbprofiles.com/
Product Hunt: The best new products in tech. Product Hunt is a
curation of the best new products, every day. Discover the latest
mobile apps, websites, and technology products that everyone's
talking about. https://www.producthunt.com/

31. My Top Five
‘Dating-Worthy’ Small
Business Apps
Plus Two Bonuses!
1) Trello
2) Canva
3) Note
4) Feedly
5) IFTTT
+ Wave & Slack

32. Get Set Up With Wave & Slack.
Take Your Time Dating.
Where Work Happens
When your team needs
to kick off a project, hire
a new employee, deploy
some code, review a
sales contract, finalize
next year's budget,
measure an A/B test,
plan your next office
opening, and more,
Slack has you covered.
Award-winning free
accounting software.
Wave seamlessly
integrated financial
services for small
businesses.
Millions of small
businesses trust Wave to
track their expenses,
send invoices, get paid
and balance their books.

33. Technology Innovation:
Predicted Impact By 2030
Presented by Professor Laura Kinnard, MBA, Drake University

34. Photo credit: The Verge
Disruptive Innovation by 2030

35. 3-D Printing, Big Data, Medicine, and Other
• 1 trillion sensors will be connected to the internet by 2022.
• 10% of the world's population will be wearing clothes
connected to the internet by 2022
• By 2024, more than 50% of internet traffic to homes will be
from appliances and devices.
• The first implantable mobile phone will become
commercially available in 2025.
• The first government will replace its census with big-data
technologies by 2023.

36. Technology Trends: Automation, Machine Learning, Internet of Things (IoT)
• First 3D-printed car will be in production by 2022.
• The first transplant of a 3D-printed liver will occur by 2024
• 10% of reading glasses will be connected to the internet by
2023.
• The first robotic pharmacist will arrive in the US 2021.
• 90% of the global population will have a supercomputer in
their pocket by 2023.
• Access to the internet will become a basic right by 2024.
• 90% of the population will have unlimited and free data
storage by 2020

37. What Will Work Look Like in 12 Short Years (by 2030)?
What Impact Will Automation, Artificial
Intelligence, Machine Learning Have?

38. 85% Of Jobs That Will
Exist In 2030 Haven’t
Been Invented Yet.

39. Creative Destruction by 2030
It’s Predicted ‘Block Chain’ – Vastly Eliminating Barriers in
Global Trade – will impact our World and lives MORE than
the Internet!

40. Blockchain
Defined
A blockchain is a
decentralized, distributed
and public digital ledger
that is used to record
transactions across
many computers so that
the record cannot be
altered retroactively
without the alteration of
all subsequent blocks
and the collusion of the
network.
A blockchain, originally
block chain, is a
continuously growing list
of records, called
blocks, which are linked
and secured by
blockchain ‘miners’
using cryptography.

41. Blockchain Impact
Companies are already using blockchain to track items
through complex supply chains.
Blockchain-led transformation of business and government is still
many years away. Blockchain is NOT a “disruptive” technology - which can
attack a traditional business model with a lower-cost solution and overtake
incumbent firms quickly.
Blockchain IS a foundational technology - potential to create new
foundations for our economic and social systems. But while the impact
will be enormous, it will take decades for blockchain to seep into our
economic and social infrastructure.

42. Blockchain Project Ecosystem

43. Find Links to
small business apps on
Trello board:
http://bit.ly/smallbusinessapps
Contact:
Laura Kinnard, MBA
1-515-689-7792
Email: laura.kinnard@drake.edu
Connect:
Twitter/Instagram @AlaureMktg
https://www.facebook.com/groups/SPEARclassroom/
https://alaure-marketing.mn.co/
https://www.facebook.com/alauremarketing/
Thank-you!