A business management tool is an application, system, or methodology that helps a business operate effectively, maintain a competitive position, and improve performance. There is a vast range of offerings that fall into this broad category, and many are tailored to specific industries and tasks. Typically, businesses select these tools very carefully, considering their long-term stability, interoperability with their environment, usability and feature set, and ability to deliver value out of the box without needing extensive adaptation.
Popular types of business management tools for large global enterprises are those that support customer relationship management (CRM), strategic planning, market segmentation, supply chain management, total quality management, outsourcing, change management, and other enterprise resource planning projects.
There are other tools designed for small and medium-sized businesses, which enable entrepreneurs to operate profitably with limited staff. In this demographic, business management tools support the need for project management, document sharing and storage, bookkeeping, and marketing, as well as things also needed by large enterprises such as customer relationship management and outsourcing/vendor management. There are many free, open-source options available for some of the most popular business management tools, along with those offered by proprietary vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, and others.