10 important productivity tools for business consultants & consulting firms

Even the most successful consulting businesses with extensive experience under their belt aren’t without their challenges. You have to worry about problems like:

• Hybrid and remote work: 70% of white-collar workers are now remote. There’s a good chance that your team is remote at least part of the time, and that means you need a slew of business consulting software solutions and other tech to accommodate long-term remote work. Fortunately, the right project management apps will help you juggle the extra layers of complexity that come with remote work.
• Employee management: You can’t do everything by yourself. Hiring employees (and even freelancers or vendors) requires a lot of hands-on work—and that’s time you don’t have. Instead of processing employee paperwork manually or trying to nail down timesheets on your own, rely on the right tools to do all of the human capital management for you. However, you may still need expert guidance and Workday consultations to get these tools setup correctly to get the most out of it.
• Client relationships: As a business consultant, clients trust you to be an outside voice of reason. But as a professional management consultant or technology consultant, your clients expect a lot from you. You not only have to deliver amazing results but you also have to be responsive. That gets harder and harder to do as you grow your consultancy, which is why you need tools like CRM software to exceed clients’ expectations.

The good news is that business optimization is right up your alley! Approach your own consulting business as you would a client: add the necessary consulting productivity tools, project management software and automation to your business so it runs even smoother.

If your tech stack is already bloated, you might not know which tools, apps or automation software are must-haves and which are clogging your team’s workflow. A tool or cloud platform might not be the right solution for everything, but it’s still a great way to reduce errors, improve business processes, and save time. We recommend these 10 consulting productivity tools and apps to boost your consulting firm’s productivity.

1. Toggl

For consulting services businesses, time is literally money. You need to keep a very accurate record of which accounts you’re working on when. Since you likely bill your clients on an hourly basis using accounting software, accurate time reporting is crucial.

Use a software solution like Toggl to track your team’s time on office tasks and client work. It even includes reports on overhead and employee scheduling so you can manage all of your team’s time in one place.

2. Slack

Working remotely? Since you can’t casually visit Dan’s cubicle to ask him a quick question, your team needs a chat app like Slack. Slack is great because it allows you to create internal chat threads for your team as well as externally-facing chats with your clients. It’s a useful way to stay in touch with everyone in your business without overloading your inbox.

3. Calendly

If you aren’t using a scheduling tool like Calendly, you need to try it—this consulting productivity tool will save your team so much time. Instead of going back and forth with your clients to book a simple weekly meeting, let them book a time in Calendly. This cloud platform automatically adjusts based on your availability and even displays available times in the recipient’s time zone.

4. Copper CRM

You’re juggling numerous critical tasks as a business consultant. Personalized, one-on-one outreach is essential for maintaining client relationships, but the difficulty level increases as you add more clients to the mix. As your consulting practice grows, your business needs will inevitably evolve.

A customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Copper helps you automate and scale relationship nurturing. Instead of wondering about the status of a client’s project or guessing about what a lead wants to see, trust your CRM to track this data for you.

Copper is specifically designed for consulting firms that want to delight their clients by nurturing meaningful, lasting relationships. Our Google Chrome extension lets users add contacts, track touchpoints and see real-time customer data all from within your Gmail inbox. Copper helps streamline and automate marketing, sales, and customer service outreach—perfect for satisfying your clients’ needs at every stage of their relationship with your consulting business.

5. Google Workspace

Remote work can be challenging, but a comprehensive productivity and collaboration software suite like Google Workspace makes it much easier. Organize all of your essential work resources in one place, including:

• Calendar
• Video conferencing software
• Documents
• Presentations
• Email
• Spreadsheets
• Forms

The beautiful thing about Google is that it’s intuitive and easy to use in a distributed team environment. It also integrates seamlessly with Copper, the only Google Workspace-recommended CRM. Google Workspace is also an affordable way to make the cloud accessible to your consulting team or group of management consultants, no matter where they are.

6. Zapier

Are you in love with two consulting productivity tools that don’t integrate with each other? Sometimes you need to connect two software solutions that don’t play nice with each other, and that’s where Zapier comes in. This is an integration tool that lets you hyper-customize how your tools work together. For example, you can use Zapier to alert you on Slack when a client fills out a feedback form.

7. Unroll.me

Are you subscribed to all of your clients’ email newsletters? You definitely need to keep tabs on your clients, but the deluge of emails in your inbox is overwhelming. Use a tool for business consultants like Unroll.me to consolidate all of these emails in one. Instead of receiving 20+ notifications a day, you’ll only get one.

8. QuickBooks

Paper invoices and checks are so 2005. Use accounting software like QuickBooks to invoice clients, track your expenses, and forecast financial performance. You can even view real-time updates on your invoices and remind clients to pay. Plus, QuickBooks allows clients to pay online (and even set up auto-pay) so you can process everything more quickly.

9. Docusign

You need clients to sign a contract before you can kick off their project. But it can take forever to convince someone to sign a PDF, and that’s why your consulting firm needs a tool like Docusign. Instead of allowing contracts to languish in clients’ or vendors’ inboxes, Docusign makes it easy to quickly sign documents. It will even remind your clients to sign the contract, which means sealing deals more quickly and shortening your sales process. Plus, Docusign effortlessly integrates with CRMs like Copper.

10. Gusto

Got employees? It’s stressful managing the HR side of things as a small business, especially when you want to focus all of your energy on your clients’ needs. Business consulting software like Gusto can serve as a stand-in HR person for small consulting businesses. Use this tool to automate paychecks, track HR paperwork and provide employees with benefits.

These 10 consulting firm tools will help you run a saner, leaner consulting business. Delight your customers and deepen relationships by streamlining your biz with the right technology. Remember that software is still a big commitment, so understand the pricing and contract terms before you add a new tool to the mix.

As a business consultant, you know relationships are everything. Copper is an essential tool that helps you personalize every client interaction, which leads to better relationships (and long-term clients). See how Copper helps consulting firms thrive.