Business Tools- My Favorite SAAS Business Tools

November 23, 2010

Business tools seem to be exploding in number right now. I play around with a lot of them and few make it into my daily routine.

My favorites:

LinkedIn: I find that having my network connected on Linkedin really makes it easy to search my contacts when I have a specific need. It takes some work to keep the network updated on LinkedIn and I don’t like the UI nearly as much as Facebook, but the results are worth it. I also like to see what my network is talking about in their status updates. LinkedIn is a great business tool to help me stay connected to my network.

Central Desktop: Our firm uses central desktop to collaborate and keep track of documents online, run online meetings, hold discussions, and generally stay updated on all of our important topics. We have been using it for 3 years now and I can’t imagine working without it. Central Desktop is the best business tool I know to facilitate team collaboration.

VersionOne: Our firm uses VersionOne to run our agile management system so we can stay focused on our most important goals. It was developed for agile software development teams, but we use it to run our strategic consulting services team, OpenView Labs, with great success. If you want to manage your company using agile, VersionOne is a great business tool.

We use a lot of other business tools I am really happy with (e.g. salesforce.com, ExactTarget, Compendium, Twitter), but these three business tools are my standouts at this point. We liked Central Desktop and VersionOne so much that we invested in their companies!

Founder & Partner

As the founder of OpenView, Scott focuses on distinctive business models and products that uniquely address a meaningful market pain point. This includes a broad interest in application and infrastructure companies, and businesses that are addressing the next generation of technology, including SaaS, cloud computing, mobile platforms, storage, networking, IT tools, and development tools.