Why you need commercial auto insurance

Regardless of the industry, you’re in, or how big your employee size is, commercial auto insurance will help you stay strong and secure during a crisis. 

Especially when you’re a small business owner who doesn’t want to stress out about dealing with unexpected expenses immediately after getting into an accident with another vehicle or other pedestrians nearby. These types of incidents could put a serious dent into profits if left unaddressed until later.

Here are five reasons why you need to get your company vehicle insured.

Protects your business from the high costs of accidents

Commercial auto insurance protects your business from the high costs associated with accidents. It also covers any damages you may cause to other people or property while using your car for business.

Please be aware that commercial auto insurance is different from personal auto insurance. Personal auto insurance policies typically have lower limits and do not cover business-related activities. However, if your employees use their personal vehicles for business purposes, you can avail of business car insurance to protect them.

Pays to repair or replace your fleet vehicles if damaged or stolen

Other than accidents, there are many scenarios that might get heavy on your pockets. You may wish to replace an expensive piece of equipment with a newer model if it isn’t functioning properly. There may have been damages, such as broken doors, smashed windows, or damaged ignition locks on the vehicle, that you wish to repair as soon as possible. 

Or you might need to cover expenses for a car that was parked inside your business’s parking lot at night, and someone broke into it, stole parts, or worse, swept away the vehicle from the premises. 

Luckily, most commercial auto insurances cover the cost incurred by such damages or theft! Just make sure to check that your policy covers theft and damage besides accidents.

Offers liability protection

Liability insurance is a must for any company vehicle. It’s when you or your employee accidentally happen to damage property or cause an injury to someone while driving the company vehicle. Often, the victims of such accidents may file lawsuits, which can incur huge losses and stain a company’s reputation. 

Having commercial auto insurance protects your business from lawsuits and can include coverage for bodily injury or property damage claims, as well as legal fees. 

The liability coverage you purchase depends on how much you want to spend on protecting yourself against potential legal costs—the higher the amount of coverage purchased, the more expensive it will be per month. If possible, try to purchase this type of protection on a per-vehicle basis rather than an annual basis—since this means less paperwork.

Helps you adhere to the state or national laws

Having commercial auto insurance is not just a matter of personal preference anymore! Many states have laws that require you to have liability insurance when operating your company vehicle. So it’s important to ensure you’re covered before registering your vehicle with the state or local authorities.

In some states, the requirement is only for certain types of vehicles, drivers, or driver’s licenses. For example, in New York, driving without insurance can have serious consequences. A person could get arrested, fined, or have their license suspended for not following the law. Moreover, if a person without insurance is caught in an accident, their license and vehicle registration would be suspended for over a year, along with a fine of up to $1500!

Also, companies have different requirements for insurance coverage, depending on whether they own more than one car at once. So if you’re starting a new business with three people working together, you’ll need different coverage levels than if only two people were working together.

It is good for your business reputation

Lawsuits and hefty fines can have a massive impact on a business! This could mean defamation and customer loss. On the other hand, businesses with a clean slate, i.e., commercial auto insurance, are more likely to attract customers and retain the ones they already have. 

Keep in mind that insurance companies are interested in growing their businesses too, so they may be more inclined to offer you discounts or other incentives if your company has commercial auto insurance coverage. They also want to help you find new customers who will have an interest in what your company offers and benefit mutually. 

Make sure you know and understand specific driving laws—such as whether or not an employee should be able to drive their vehicle on company time (usually after hours). 

Also, many companies choose insurance not only for themselves but also for their employees. This is because having this kind of coverage helps ensure things run smoothly at all times without any issues arising later down the road when everyone needs access to transportation at once!

How to choose the right commercial auto insurance

To know what kind of commercial auto insurance coverage you need for your business, you first have to consider your business’s needs. The amount of coverage you need depends on the type of business you run and the vehicles you own. 

For example, suppose your company owns a fleet of trucks that are used for hauling freight or delivering goods from one place to another. In that case, it’s common practice for companies like this to purchase extra insurance coverage for those vehicles. This way, if an accident involves one particular truck in the fleet—even though this may be rare—it won’t ruin all their other trucks’ value too much (or at least not enough).

Other factors that influence the total cost of your coverage are:

• Previous driving records of the driver
• The size, weight, and type of items being transported
• The type of vehicle and the purpose it’s used for
• The value of the vehicle

These are the factors an insurance company considers while examining a business’s potential for risk to determine its overall insurance cost!

Take that first step towards protecting your assets, and learn more about commercial auto insurance today. You’ll understand everything commercial auto insurance covers and what kind you actually need. This will surely help you make an informed decision about the coverage to choose for your business!

Auto insurance is less expensive than you think!

When you’re considering having your car insured, it’s important to know that the insurance cost is not as high as you think. You can try several things to lower your premiums’ cost and ensure you get the best deal.

• Consider how many employees work at each location
• Estimate how many miles per day/week/month are driven by each person
• Get a quote from multiple companies
• If one company doesn’t have what you need, try another one

If the insurance rates go up or down (which happens often), there will still be options available to meet your budget needs during those times when rates change drastically. 

You know you’ve bagged the right policy when it’s covering the cost of injuries, medical coverage, property damage, towing costs, and other damages you could possibly think of!

Conclusion

Insured company vehicles are a business owner’s best bet, allowing them to secure their assets and save their hard-earned money in difficult situations. In fact, investing in the right protection for your commercial vehicles is as important as investing in the vehicles and your business.

You must get a commercial auto insurance policy for every vehicle you use for business purposes, even a 2-door sedan, irrespective of whether you’re just traveling to and from the job site.

8 leading business management automation tools

After thorough research, here is our rundown of the best, smartest, and simplest solutions for managing and automating businesses.

Zluri – for automated SaaS management

Zluri is a tool for managing your SaaS stack. A management platform for businesses concerned about cost-effectiveness, visibility, and efficiency.

Features

A SaaS management platform like Zluri offers a plethora of functionalities. However, we have decided to focus on its select features for now.

• Automate employee onboarding and offboarding with purpose-built workflows and an easy-to-use, intuitive UI.
• Get data-rich reports and insights through real-time notifications to improve budgeting.
• Use renewal tracking to build approval processes for software application contracts and renewals.
• Minimize application costs via shadow IT while keeping track of application spending.
• Smoothly manage vendors with access to vendor contracts and metadata.
• Utilize usage monitoring to evaluate the effectiveness of your application and learn how to reduce license costs.

Benefits

• Streamline reporting and documentation while cutting costs, increasing ROI (return on investment), and gathering data.
• Keep track of renewals with a smart calendar.
• Make decisions based on growing trends.
• Receive in-depth analysis to reduce or maximize application expenses.
• Find hidden cross-platform expenditures.
• Make wise choices by staying informed about app ecosystem changes.

Pricing

Zluri offers four plans – Basic, Pro, Business, and Business Plus. You can contact their sales team for the pricing details.

Booknetic – for appointment scheduling

Booknetic primarily functions as an appointment scheduling plugin and assists numerous organizations in automating their booking procedures.

The software’s adaptability to different business kinds across all industries makes it suitable for law companies, consulting businesses, academic facilities, training instructors, and other corporate types.

Features

• All generated activities are immediately preserved in both customers’ and workers’ calendars thanks to calendar syncing. 
• Provides automated alerts and reminder tools to help raise appointment attending rates and lower cancellation costs. 
• Uses native interaction with PayPal, WooCommerce, and Stripe interfaces as digital payment portals – for simplified transitions and sale of e-commerce items.
• Integrates with Zoom, which enables consulting businesses to expedite online meetings through the plugin.

Benefits

• Gives managers authority over employee workflow and their agendas are modified accordingly.
• You can either compose your reminders or utilize the platform’s readymade shortcode. You can Instantly write email, Text, and WhatsApp notifications. 
• Manage invoices and tax payments within the site, thanks to streamlined billing.
• Get details on the volume of events that are planned for each site, service, and staff on the dashboard. Depending on the outcomes, you can analyze them and make smarter business decisions.

Pricing

For all the aforementioned features and benefits, which include new versions, Booknetic charges $79/month.

ActiveCampaign – for customer relationship management

ActiveCampaign is a CRM aka customer relationship management system that integrates B2B, B2C, and e-commerce firms.

It incorporates various other automation categories like email campaigns, sales, and services and support into its system to deliver a distinctive customer experience.

Features

• Drive leads through your marketing cycle without any hiccups through well-planned client involvement.
• Inform users about which options to pursue and when and how to connect via automation categorization and lead scoring. 
• Boost sales interaction via automated messages and consumer information.
• Access more than 200 templates for things like welcoming emails, abandoned card features, feedback gathering, contact tagging, etc.

Benefits

• Create a comprehensive marketing campaign, enter customer data gathered both offline and online, and schedule follow-up emails.
• Achieve strong customer service with tutorials and 1:1 onboarding sessions.
• Migrate your content for free from your existing CRM software if you decide to switch.

Pricing

It’s an affordable option, which allows you to add 1000 contacts, starting at $19/month for all organizational types. But before making a purchase, you may need a demonstration depending on how intricate your needs are.

Slack – for automated communication

Even while email continues to be the primary method for communicating with customers, you can limit its use among personnel. 

Slack advertised its unique value proposition as fewer emails among groups when it first went into operation. Today, it manages a huge number of tasks for agile projects, marketing teams, startups, and big companies.

Features

• Synchronize operations for both remote and in-house teams. 
• Assign tasks to accountable groups through designated areas, called channels.
• Utilize built-in video and voice calls as well as screen-sharing for one-on-one interaction.
• Connect Slack to more than 2000 utilities from the application directory.
• Build a customized app and link it to other tools using the Slack API.
• Get multiple functionalities: 1:1 phone and video conversations, 10,000 message archives, and 10 integration channels – all in the free version.

Benefits

• Share files, comments, and cross-platform communication conveniently. 
• Use task managers and bots to automate processes for quick and efficient delivery.
• Initiate or join video conferencing right away from the application by integrating virtual meeting capabilities. 
• Simply link and integrate Slack with other digital workspace tools.

Pricing

Slack offers multiple premium and free plans for groups of any capacity in its free version. Whereas the Pro memberships, which include unlimited message histories, plugins, and group calls lasting up to 15 minutes, are priced at $7/month.

Omnisend – for automating business relationships

Another of the best advertising solutions for automating company relationships is Omnisend. For e-commerce, the multichannel platform was created expressly to support their many market segments and eventually increase sales. 

Features

• Track your consumer data on Shopify, WooCommerce, or other e-commerce solutions, thanks to its comprehensive integration with them. 
• Begin a series of communications for all relevant visitors by determining mail subject lines and workflows.
• Make easy alterations with a drag-and-drop tool.
• Improve your incentive schemes and make data-driven choices via automation splitting and A/B tests.

Benefits

• Select customers to deliver smart customer campaigns, thanks to the numerous transactional actions and consumer characteristics. 
• Get reports having information on the viewer’s email engagement and build campaigns that result in the most sales.
• Use a central location to manage all KPIs (key performance indicators).
• Get useful ad experiences by syncing client details automatically into Google and Facebook.

Pricing

For new companies, Omnisend provides a free account that allows them to send 500 emails, construct sign-up forms, and conduct A/B tests. You can compose emails, send an infinite number of web pushes, and hire a client service manager for $16/month.

Asana – for automating project management

One of the best solutions for automating your company’s project management processes is Asana. It helps with task organization and business process details. 

Features

• Quickly construct boards that promote engagement with a drag-and-drop graphical builder.
• Focus on tasks and keep projects on schedule with the help of team calendar tools. 
• Integrate seamlessly with GSuite, Azure, Dropbox, Slack, Tableau, Salesforce, Jira, and other software development company applications.

Benefits

• Receive automatic notifications and updates regarding the progress of events.
• Easily handle different projects in many workplaces. All members of the team can f
• Get current information about the team’s performance according to priorities, assignees, and projects via the Reports tab
• Make charts and graphs that you can export or distribute with the team.

Pricing

The free version allows individuals and small teams to interact with 15 other people on an endless variety of projects. For $11/month, teams of greater size can purchase a Premium membership that includes infinite dashboards, assignment templates, administration interfaces, and portfolio management tools.

Sprout Social – for social media automation

One of the best social media management platforms with social listening tools is Sprout Social. 

It includes a number of marketing optimization tools that you can use to automate your company’s presence and hit KPIs.

Features

• Manage both organic and paid campaigns.
• Gain useful information from conversations via social listening software.
• Get information about company web pages and accounts with advanced analytics.
• Receive insights via PPC ads and competitor analysis for more smart social marketing decisions. 
• Sprout Social has improved capabilities that enable agencies, small businesses, and enterprise-level enterprises to grow their marketing efforts.

Benefits

• Plan and produce social material across channels as part of team engagement, assign individuals to each assignment, and track performance. 
• Increase sales and produce a profitable return on investment with integrated catalogs.
• Gain valuable insights through customer data collection in essential areas including competition analysis, sentiment analysis, influencer identification, and others.

Pricing

With three distinct pricing tiers, Sprout Social offers various account and report options. The cheapest subscription, which includes five accounts, social CRM, and post-level reporting features, is $89/month.

Sprout Social – for social media automation

Through Zapier, businesspersons can connect over 3000 web apps to save time and increase productivity.

Features

• Link your apps to automatically transfer information and concentrate on the most crucial ones.
• Get alerts when new tasks, customer reviews, and newly opened panels are added via connected channels.
• Customize or modify an autonomous workflow through built-in themes.
• Instantly add consumers’ contacts to mailing lists and use CRM to enhance marketing efforts when they engage with your information or merchandise.

Benefits

• Gain visibility into activities including task history, linked applications, zap creation and account setup, and Google Document import on a configurable dashboard.
• Use the reformatter to instantly transform data into the format you desire. 
• Integrate Zapier without any technical expertise.

Pricing

The free account allows for the addition of 100 projects and five zaps each month. Premium packages come with webhooks, limitless integrations apps, and zaps beginning at $20.

Conclusion

Managing a team is difficult. Even more difficult is leading a group of knowledgeable individuals. Since each expert has a different strategy for achieving their goals, they all have goals in that direction. 

You can, fortunately, remain at the forefront of your workflows and significantly increase the effectiveness of your management with the help of a variety of business automation solutions

Challenges for startup owners

It can be an overwhelming experience, trying to lead a group of fresh-faced employees at the very beginning of a company’s life cycle. There are so many things to think about: the product, the team, the clients, the investors. Not to mention, you’re also trying to stay afloat in an industry that’s constantly changing and growing. 

It’s difficult to keep track of everything, and even more difficult to make sure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal. Some of the biggest challenges managers can face are:

• Defining long-term goals and objectives
• Creating a product roadmap
• Managing team performance
• Monitoring progress

If any of these sound familiar, then learning to leverage a software solution might be just what you need to help get your startup on track.

Benefits of goal-management software

One of the best things about using a software solution like Goals by KeepSolid is that it can be helpful to any kind of business, of any size, at any point in its development. 

If you have three remote workers that are in different time zones–software can help. If you have 100 employees crammed into one floor of an office building–software can help. 

Some of the key benefits that your workers will experience are:

• Increased clarity and transparency around objectives
• A better understanding of how their work contributes to the company’s success
• The ability to track their progress and performance
• A way to give and receive feedback in a constructive manner

And for you, as the manager, you’ll get:

• More visibility into what everyone is working on
• Easier progress tracking towards long-term goals
• The ability to quickly adapt as the market changes

Ultimately, using software to manage your team will help increase efficiency and clarity, while giving you the peace of mind that comes with knowing everyone is working towards the same goal.

Goals by KeepSolid can help

How will you know that everyone is working toward those goals? That’s where we come in. KeepSolid Goals has a long list of features, including:

• Budget Control
• Mind Maps
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• Milestones
• Kanban boards

But the most important one for new startup owners is the one that gets the most press: the product roadmap.

What is a product roadmap?

An essential piece of any project management process, a product roadmap is a high-level overview of the development cycle for a product or service. It includes important milestones, features, and delivery dates, and is meant to be a flexible document that can be updated as the market changes. 

And while it’s possible to create a product roadmap without software, using a tool like KeepSolid Goals can help you manage and update your roadmap as the market changes, while also giving you real-time visibility into what everyone is working on.

How to create a product roadmap in Goals

It’s incredibly easy to get started. Not only is it free to try, but the intuitive interface will have you throwing up objectives in minutes, and assigning team members the same day. 

Here is a step-by-step guide to creating your first product roadmap (once you’ve signed up, of course):

1. Create your first objective – this could be something like ‘Increase website traffic by 10%’ or ‘Launch a new product line’ 
2. Create tasks under this objective that need to be completed in order to achieve it 
3. Assign these tasks to members of your team 
4. Make sure you’ve included Key Success Factors (KSF) in order to know exactly what is required for the task to be completed. 
5. Set Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to make sure everyone is moving in the right direction, and that things will be completed on time. 
6. Create deadlines for each task, and reminders for your team members when something is approaching it. 
7. Watch your team smoothly speed toward your goal (while monitoring the process to determine if any changes are necessary).

That’s it! Just by creating a product roadmap, you’re already well on your way to leveraging the power of software to help your startup get to the next level.