The 10 Gadgets and Systems Your Business Can't Survive Without

Top 10 Essential Tech Gadgets and Systems for Successful Businesses

1. A VoIP System

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) means that your phone call data is transferred over the internet as opposed to traditional phone lines. The best VoIP systems allow you to configure advanced phone routing for your business at a fraction of the cost of older systems.

Choose a cloud-based virtual PBX, and there’s no need for any expensive hardware in your office. VoIP services like RingCentral and Vonage allow you to use your computer or mobile phone to make calls, and it’s easy to add physical VoIP phones to the mix if you like having a traditional desktop phone.

2. Website Essentials

Every business requires a website. Many business owners choose to use an all-in-one designing platform such as Wix. These website builders include all the tools you need for business website essentials such as blogs, image galleries, and e-commerce stores. If you need more control over how your website looks and operates, web hosting platforms come in many shapes and sizes, from shared hosting to dedicated hosting. 

Are you still jotting down information about your best business leads on the back of a napkin? If so, it’s time to equip your business with a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Using CRM software, you can easily keep track of your sales pipeline. Besides being much more efficient, CRMs allow you to leverage the power of automation to reduce your workload.

3. Cloud Storage

Mission-critical business assets must be accessible from anywhere, all the time. That means clustering business systems and resources in the cloud. The best cloud storage providers make it easy to transition from offline storage to cloud storage.

Keeping your files online makes it easy for your team members to get the information they need wherever they are, at any time of the day or night. It’s cheaper than storing data offline, it’s often more secure than on-premises storage, and it’s much easier to scale as your business grows.

4. Noise-Canceling Headphones

A fantastic quality-of-life upgrade, noise-canceling headphones pick up low-frequency noise and neutralize it before it reaches your ear. This is done by creating a phase-inverted sound wave that cancels out the incoming sound completely.

You can use noise-canceling headphones to block annoying background noises like traffic sounds or the buzzing from an air conditioning unit. Or, you can listen to your music while working without being interrupted at all by background noise.

5. A Quality Webcam

With so much work being performed remotely, a great webcam is a requirement for any business. The low-resolution camera in your laptop sometimes just isn’t good enough when you need to make the best impression.

Look for a webcam that supports at least a 1080P resolution. A webcam that can record at 30 frames per second is fine, but 60 frames per second is even better. Some webcams have an AI swivel body that will follow your face, and some have HDR support that’ll really show off the color in your cheeks.

Don’t forget about audio quality, too. Choose a webcam with a great microphone, or get an auxiliary high-quality microphone to complement your webcam.

6. An AI-powered LCD Sun Visor

Bosch’s AI-powered LCD sun visor is designed to solve a major issue for commuters—glare from the sun’s rays. The system uses AI to track your face when you’re driving. More specifically, it tracks how shadows are moving across your face. The AI blocks and unblocks specific sections of the sun visor in real time to keep the glare out of your eyes.

The biggest benefit of this system over a traditional sun visor is that 90% of the visor remains transparent. You can see the road in front of you much more effectively than you would with a traditional visor, and you’ll never get sun glare in your eyes again.

Google, too, has filed a patent for a smart LCD sun visor with a built-in touchscreen display. This sun visor will also have the ability to block out unwanted sun rays while offering a better view of the road ahead.

7. The Oura Ring

To perform well at your job, you and your employees need to keep yourselves in peak condition.

The Oura Ring is a high-tech health monitoring ring that tracks your sleep, activity, stress, temperature, and heart rate 24/7. It’s stylish, lightweight, and offers more accurate readings than a fitness watch. It only takes about 20-80 minutes to charge, while offering you up to seven days of performance between charges.

All data recorded is sent to your smartphone, where you can use the well-designed app to check things like your sleep cycle, body temperature, and heart rate. You can use this data to devise new ways to improve your health and performance. 

8. Smart Home Devices

Smart home devices make working from home so much better. Systems like Hue, Nest, and Amazon Echo allow you to control virtually all the electronics in your home through the use of your smartphone, computer, or voice. You can play music, make calls, set reminders, turn your lights on and off, or control the temperature of your home with a voice command. 

You can even send commands when you're out and about, such as engaging your home security system or opening the garage door. The sky's the limit with smart home devices, and it’s never been easier or cheaper to have a fully automated home.

9. A Portable Charger

If there’s something business owners on the go are always looking for, it’s convenient power for their devices. Smartphones, laptops, portable hard drives, fitness watches, medical alert devices—the list of devices we must carry that require periodic charging seems to be constantly growing.

A portable charger is a useful tool for keeping your devices topped up with juice. A portable USB power bank will do the job for phones, but a portable AC laptop charger with USC and USB A ports will serve as a better companion overall, as it will be able to charge more of your devices.

10. A Wireframing Tool

Your resident marketing whizz has come up with an ace new idea for a great landing page. But how to translate thoughts and words into imagery? The answer is a wireframing tool.

 Wireframing tools allow you to plot mock-ups of websites, in-app pages, and other marketing ideas. And the good news is that you don’t need to know an image tag from a hyperlink to use them. 

Using a wireframing tool will speed up your design and rollout process and make it easier for your creatives to showcase their best thinking.

Time to Grow

Now is an ideal time to look at the systems your business is running and identify key areas for improvement. VoIP systems, webcams, and quality microphones can all combine to help make remote meetings more seamless. It’s never too late to migrate legacy systems to the cloud, too, or invest in other smart gadgets that make surviving the modern work paradigm that little bit easier.