100 Best Apps for COOs: Operations Tools for Growing Teams
Chief operating officers need reliable systems for planning, communication, execution, and measurement. This first group covers foundational tools for organizing the day-to-day work of a growing company.
Asana
Asana organizes projects, tasks, owners, deadlines, and team workflows in shared workspaces. It reduces unclear accountability by assigning work explicitly and showing each project’s current status.
monday.com
monday.com provides customizable boards for tracking projects, processes, resources, and operational work. It helps teams replace scattered status updates with visible, standardized operational workflows.
ClickUp
ClickUp combines task management, documents, goals, dashboards, and team collaboration in one platform. It addresses tool sprawl by centralizing planning and execution work across multiple departments.
Jira
Jira tracks issues, development tasks, backlogs, sprints, and software delivery workflows. It helps operations leaders monitor engineering commitments when release work lacks consistent visibility.
Notion
Notion lets teams create connected documents, databases, project pages, and internal knowledge hubs. It reduces time spent searching for procedures by keeping operational documentation in structured shared spaces.
Slack
Slack provides channel-based messaging, file sharing, searchable conversations, and app integrations for teams. It reduces fragmented internal communication by giving teams dedicated spaces for operational discussions.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams combines workplace chat, video meetings, calls, file collaboration, and Microsoft 365 access. It simplifies coordination for Microsoft-centric teams that otherwise switch between separate communication tools.
Airtable
Airtable combines spreadsheet-style tables with relational databases, views, forms, and workflow features. It helps operations teams manage interconnected records when ordinary spreadsheets become difficult to maintain.
Smartsheet
Smartsheet provides spreadsheet-like project tracking, reporting, forms, automation, and portfolio management tools. It helps leaders consolidate project reporting when teams need familiar spreadsheet-based planning.
Wrike
Wrike supports project planning, task management, request intake, approvals, and team reporting. It streamlines incoming work requests when teams struggle to prioritize work through email.
Linear
Linear is an issue-tracking platform for planning, managing, and monitoring product and engineering work. It gives operational leaders clearer product delivery signals when engineering tasks are scattered.
Trello
Trello uses visual boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks and lightweight workflows. It makes simple processes easier to follow when teams need a clear visual workflow.
Basecamp
Basecamp brings project discussions, to-do lists, schedules, files, and check-ins into shared projects. It reduces project communication overload by grouping conversations and work around each initiative.
Coda
Coda creates collaborative documents that combine text, tables, formulas, buttons, and connected data. It helps teams turn static operating documents into interactive tools without building custom software.
Confluence
Confluence is a collaborative workspace for creating, organizing, and sharing team documentation. It addresses undocumented processes by giving teams a central place for operational knowledge.
Google Workspace
Google Workspace includes email, calendars, cloud storage, documents, spreadsheets, and video meetings. It reduces collaboration friction by letting distributed teams edit and share working files together.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 provides productivity apps, email, cloud storage, collaboration, and security administration tools. It helps organizations standardize everyday work when employees use incompatible office software.
Zapier
Zapier automates workflows by connecting web applications and moving data between selected triggers and actions. It eliminates repetitive manual handoffs when operational information must move between cloud tools.
Make
Make is a visual automation platform for connecting apps and building multi-step workflows. It helps teams automate complex recurring processes without relying on manual data transfers.
Workato
Workato is an enterprise automation platform that connects applications, data, and business processes. It addresses disconnected systems by automating cross-functional workflows between business applications.
Loom
Loom enables users to record and share screen, camera, and audio videos asynchronously. It reduces unnecessary meetings by letting operators explain processes and updates through short recordings.
Miro
Miro provides an online whiteboard for workshops, process mapping, planning, and collaborative brainstorming. It helps distributed teams align visually when processes and decisions are difficult to discuss verbally.
Lucidchart
Lucidchart creates diagrams for processes, systems, organizational structures, and data flows. It clarifies complex operations by turning undocumented workflows into shareable visual diagrams.
Calendly
Calendly automates meeting scheduling by displaying availability and coordinating calendar invitations. It removes back-and-forth scheduling emails when leaders coordinate meetings across busy calendars.
Docusign
DocuSign supports electronic signatures, agreement preparation, routing, and signed document management. It speeds approval cycles when contracts and operational documents require remote signatures.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a customer relationship management platform for managing sales, service, and customer data. It centralizes fragmented customer records, helping operations leaders coordinate revenue and support processes.
HubSpot
HubSpot provides connected tools for marketing, sales, customer service, and customer relationship management. It reduces handoff gaps between go-to-market teams by keeping customer interactions in one system.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a sales CRM that helps teams organize deals, activities, and pipeline stages. It gives operators visibility into stalled opportunities and sales activity without relying on scattered spreadsheets.
Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM manages leads, contacts, deals, workflows, and customer communications for sales teams. It helps standardize sales processes when customer information is inconsistent across individual representatives.
NetSuite
NetSuite is a cloud business software suite covering financials, inventory, order management, and operations. It consolidates operational and financial records, reducing reconciliation work across separate business systems.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is cloud accounting software for invoicing, expenses, bookkeeping, and financial reporting. It helps small teams replace manual bookkeeping and gain a clearer view of cash movement.
Xero
Xero is online accounting software for invoicing, bank reconciliation, bills, and financial reporting. It reduces time spent matching transactions and assembling routine financial information for operational decisions.
Ramp
Ramp provides corporate cards, expense management, bill payment, and spend controls for businesses. It helps operators control decentralized spending by applying policies and reviewing expenses from one place.
Brex
Brex offers business cards, expense management, spend controls, and bill payment tools. It simplifies employee purchasing oversight by centralizing approvals, receipts, and company spending policies.
Bill.com
Bill.com automates accounts payable and receivable workflows, including invoices, approvals, and payments. It reduces manual invoice routing and payment follow-up that can slow vendor operations.
Gusto
Gusto provides payroll, benefits, hiring, and people-management tools for small and midsize businesses. It eases payroll administration by bringing employee pay, tax filings, and benefits tasks together.
Rippling
Rippling combines workforce management, payroll, benefits, and IT administration in a unified platform. It reduces onboarding complexity by coordinating employee records, payroll, and device-related administrative tasks.
Deel
Deel helps businesses hire, pay, and manage international employees and independent contractors. It addresses cross-border workforce administration by organizing contracts, payments, and local employment arrangements.
BambooHR
BambooHR is human resources software for employee records, onboarding, time off, and reporting. It replaces disconnected personnel files, giving operations teams a consistent source for employee information.
ADP Workforce Now
ADP Workforce Now provides payroll, human resources, timekeeping, benefits, and talent management tools. It helps growing organizations manage workforce administration without maintaining separate payroll and HR systems.
Tableau
Tableau is a business intelligence platform for analyzing data and creating interactive visual dashboards. It helps leaders spot operational trends by turning complex datasets into accessible visual analysis.
Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI creates reports and dashboards from business data sources for organizational analysis. It reduces dependence on manually updated reports by connecting data to shareable operational dashboards.
Looker
Looker is a business intelligence platform for exploring data, building reports, and sharing metrics. It helps teams align around governed metrics when departments calculate performance differently.
Mixpanel
Mixpanel analyzes product usage through event-based reporting, funnels, retention, and user behavior data. It helps operators identify where users abandon workflows, informing product and support process improvements.
Amplitude
Amplitude provides digital analytics for understanding user behavior, product adoption, and customer journeys. It clarifies how customers use products when operational decisions lack reliable behavioral evidence.
Datadog
Datadog monitors cloud infrastructure, applications, logs, and security signals through centralized observability tools. It helps operations teams investigate service issues faster by correlating technical signals across systems.
New Relic
New Relic provides observability tools for monitoring applications, infrastructure, logs, and digital performance. It reduces blind spots during incidents by showing how application performance affects customer-facing services.
ServiceNow
ServiceNow provides workflow software for IT service management, employee service delivery, and business operations. It standardizes service requests and approvals that otherwise move through untracked emails and messages.
Zendesk
Zendesk is customer service software for managing support tickets, help centers, and agent workflows. It prevents customer requests from falling through gaps by organizing support conversations and ownership.
Intercom
Intercom provides customer messaging, support, and help center tools for businesses and product teams. It helps teams respond consistently to customer questions by centralizing conversations and support content.
Freshservice
Freshservice provides IT service management tools for handling incidents, service requests, assets, and internal support workflows. It helps operations teams replace scattered support requests with trackable tickets, ownership, and standardized resolution processes.
Help Scout
Help Scout centralizes customer email, live chat, and help center content in a shared support platform. It helps teams prevent customer conversations from being lost across individual inboxes and informal handoffs.
Front
Front combines shared inboxes, customer messages, and team collaboration tools for managing external communications. It helps operators coordinate responses when multiple teammates need visibility into the same customer communications.
Gorgias
Gorgias is a customer support platform that connects ecommerce helpdesk conversations with store and order data. It helps ecommerce teams answer order-related questions without switching repeatedly between support and commerce systems.
Qualtrics
Qualtrics collects and analyzes experience feedback from customers, employees, and other stakeholders through surveys. It helps leaders identify recurring experience problems by organizing feedback that would otherwise remain anecdotal.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey enables teams to create, distribute, and analyze online surveys for feedback and research. It helps operations teams gather structured input instead of relying on fragmented emails or informal conversations.
Typeform
Typeform creates interactive online forms, surveys, and questionnaires with customizable question flows. It helps teams collect responses through more engaging forms when conventional questionnaires produce incomplete submissions.
Jotform
Jotform lets users build online forms, collect submissions, accept payments, and generate documents. It helps teams digitize repetitive intake processes that previously depended on paper forms or manual data entry.
Formstack
Formstack provides tools for creating forms, automating documents, and collecting electronic signatures for business workflows. It helps operations teams reduce manual administrative work across intake, approvals, and document preparation processes.
PandaDoc
PandaDoc creates proposals, quotes, contracts, and other sales documents with electronic signature workflows. It helps teams standardize customer-facing documents and track approvals without managing separate file versions.
Dropbox Sign
Dropbox Sign enables users to send, sign, and manage legally binding electronic signature requests. It helps businesses shorten document turnaround when agreements require signatures from distributed participants.
Ironclad
Ironclad is a contract lifecycle management platform for creating, reviewing, approving, and storing agreements. It helps organizations control contract processes when legal reviews and approvals are difficult to track.
Coupa
Coupa provides business spend management tools for procurement, invoicing, expenses, and supplier management. It helps operations leaders gain control over purchasing that occurs through disconnected requests and approval channels.
Procurify
Procurify manages purchasing requests, approvals, purchase orders, invoices, and organizational spend visibility. It helps teams prevent unapproved purchases by establishing clearer procurement workflows before orders are placed.
Expensify
Expensify automates expense reporting, receipt capture, reimbursements, and business expense tracking. It helps employees and finance teams avoid manual receipt collection and time-consuming expense report preparation.
SAP Concur
SAP Concur manages business travel, employee expenses, invoice processing, and associated approval workflows. It helps companies enforce travel and spending processes across employees while consolidating reimbursement records.
Stripe
Stripe provides payment processing, billing, invoicing, and financial infrastructure for online businesses. It helps businesses accept and manage digital payments without building payment infrastructure from scratch.
Chargebee
Chargebee manages subscription billing, recurring invoices, customer plans, and revenue-related billing operations. It helps subscription businesses handle plan changes and recurring charges without maintaining complex billing spreadsheets.
Shopify
Shopify provides ecommerce storefront, product catalog, checkout, and order management tools for merchants. It helps businesses launch and operate online stores without assembling separate core commerce systems.
ShipStation
ShipStation centralizes order shipping, carrier label creation, tracking, and fulfillment workflow management. It helps fulfillment teams reduce repetitive shipping tasks when orders arrive from multiple sales channels.
Cin7
Cin7 provides inventory, order, warehouse, and point-of-sale management for product-based businesses. It helps operators maintain inventory visibility when stock, sales, and fulfillment records live separately.
Katana
Katana offers manufacturing resource planning tools for production scheduling, inventory, orders, and shop-floor workflows. It helps manufacturers coordinate materials and production work when spreadsheets obscure real-time order priorities.
Fishbowl
Fishbowl provides inventory management, warehouse operations, manufacturing, and order fulfillment tools for businesses. It helps teams improve stock accuracy when inventory movements are tracked manually or inconsistently.
Odoo
Odoo offers integrated business applications for accounting, inventory, sales, manufacturing, and other operational functions. It helps growing companies consolidate workflows that otherwise require many disconnected business software tools.
Deputy
Deputy helps organizations schedule employees, track time, manage attendance, and communicate shift information. It helps managers reduce scheduling conflicts and manual timesheet work across hourly or shift-based teams.
When I Work
When I Work provides employee scheduling, time tracking, availability management, and team communication tools. It reduces shift coverage confusion by centralizing schedules, swap requests, and employee availability updates.
Homebase
Homebase helps small businesses create schedules, track employee hours, and manage team communications. It addresses manual timesheet and scheduling errors by giving managers one shared workforce workspace.
UKG Pro
UKG Pro is a human capital management platform covering payroll, HR, talent, and workforce management. It helps operations leaders reduce fragmented people processes by consolidating core workforce administration data.
Paylocity
Paylocity provides cloud software for payroll, human resources, benefits, talent, and workforce management. It simplifies employee administration by connecting payroll and HR workflows within a single platform.
Paycor
Paycor offers payroll and human capital management software for HR, recruiting, benefits, and timekeeping. It helps growing teams avoid disconnected employee records by centralizing essential people operations tasks.
HiBob
HiBob provides human resources software for employee records, onboarding, time off, and compensation management. It reduces administrative overhead by organizing employee lifecycle information and routine HR workflows centrally.
Lattice
Lattice provides people management tools for performance reviews, goals, engagement surveys, and compensation planning. It helps leaders structure inconsistent performance processes through repeatable review and goal-setting workflows.
15Five
15Five offers performance management software with check-ins, reviews, objectives, and manager development resources. It helps managers surface employee blockers through regular check-ins instead of occasional conversations.
Culture Amp
Culture Amp provides employee feedback, engagement, performance, and development tools for workplace teams. It helps organizations identify workforce sentiment issues through structured surveys and feedback analysis.
Greenhouse
Greenhouse is recruiting software for managing job openings, candidates, interviews, and hiring workflows. It reduces hiring coordination delays by standardizing candidate pipelines and interview feedback collection.
Lever
Lever combines applicant tracking and candidate relationship management for recruiting teams and hiring managers. It helps teams maintain candidate engagement by organizing outreach, applications, and interview stages together.
Ashby
Ashby provides recruiting software with applicant tracking, sourcing, scheduling, analytics, and hiring planning. It helps recruiting teams replace scattered hiring tools with connected candidate and planning workflows.
Workable
Workable is recruiting software for posting jobs, sourcing candidates, screening applicants, and coordinating interviews. It reduces manual recruiting follow-up by organizing applicants and hiring tasks in one pipeline.
Jobvite
Jobvite offers talent acquisition software for recruiting, candidate relationship management, and employee referrals. It helps hiring teams manage high candidate volumes through structured workflows and centralized communication.
Clockify
Clockify is time tracking software that records work hours, projects, timesheets, and billable activity. It helps operations teams understand labor allocation by replacing informal hour reporting with tracked time.
Toggl Track
Toggl Track records time spent on projects and tasks, with reporting for teams. It addresses poor visibility into effort by showing how teams distribute time across work.
Harvest
Harvest tracks time and expenses, then supports reporting and invoicing for client work. It helps teams prevent missed billable work by linking recorded hours to project reporting and invoices.
Connecteam
Connecteam provides deskless workforce tools for scheduling, time clocks, forms, tasks, and communications. It helps distributed frontline teams replace paper processes with mobile scheduling and operational updates.
SafetyCulture
SafetyCulture provides inspection and operations software for checklists, audits, issue reporting, and training. It helps teams standardize field inspections by replacing paper checklists with trackable digital workflows.
MaintainX
MaintainX manages maintenance work orders, asset records, inspections, and operational procedures for teams. It reduces equipment downtime risks by organizing preventive maintenance tasks and repair histories centrally.
UpKeep
UpKeep is maintenance management software for work orders, assets, preventive maintenance, and inventory. It helps maintenance teams avoid overlooked repairs through scheduled work orders and asset tracking.
Asset Panda
Asset Panda tracks physical assets, assignments, maintenance history, audits, and custom asset information. It solves asset ownership uncertainty by maintaining searchable records of equipment locations and custodians.
Sortly
Sortly is inventory management software for tracking supplies, equipment, quantities, and item locations. It helps teams avoid inventory surprises by making stock levels and locations easier to monitor.
Fivetran
Fivetran automates data extraction and loading from business applications into cloud data destinations. It reduces manual data pipeline maintenance by managing recurring data synchronization between systems.
dbt Cloud
dbt Cloud helps data teams build, test, document, and schedule analytics data transformations. It helps organizations improve reporting consistency by versioning and testing shared data transformation logic.
The strongest operational stack depends on a company’s workflows, existing systems, and the level of process maturity its team has reached.