10 Essential MCP Servers for Business Operations Teams

Model Context Protocol (MCP) launched last week. The community has already built dozens of MCP servers that connect Claude Code to business tools.

If you're on an operations, consulting, or business team, these 10 MCP servers will immediately improve your Claude workflows.

## 1. Slack MCP Server (Official)

**What it does:**
Search message history, read channels, and understand team conversations directly from Claude.

**Why it's useful:**
Instead of searching Slack manually and pasting results into Claude, just ask: "What did the marketing team discuss about the product launch yesterday?" Claude searches Slack and summarizes.

**Best for:**
- Catching up on missed conversations
- Finding past decisions and context
- Summarizing long threads
- Understanding cross-team discussions

**Setup difficulty:** Medium (requires Slack API token)

## 2. Google Drive MCP Server (Official)

**What it does:**
Read documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from Google Drive without downloading or opening them.

**Why it's useful:**
Ask Claude to analyze your Q4 revenue spreadsheet, summarize last quarter's board deck, or compare three different strategy documents - all without leaving Claude Code.

**Best for:**
- Document analysis and comparison
- Finding information across multiple files
- Summarizing presentations and reports
- Extracting data from spreadsheets

**Setup difficulty:** Medium (requires Google Cloud project and OAuth)

## 3. PostgreSQL MCP Server (Official)

**What it does:**
Query your PostgreSQL database directly from Claude conversations.

**Why it's useful:**
Ask business questions like "What's our customer retention rate for accounts created in Q3?" and Claude writes the SQL query, executes it, and interprets results.

**Best for:**
- Ad-hoc data analysis
- Business metrics and reporting
- Customer data queries
- Validating assumptions with data

**Setup difficulty:** Easy (just provide database connection string)

## 4. GitHub MCP Server (Official)

**What it does:**
Read repositories, issues, pull requests, and code without opening GitHub.

**Why it's useful:**
Even non-developers benefit. Ask Claude: "What features did engineering ship last week?" or "Are there any open bugs related to customer authentication?" Claude reads GitHub and reports back.

**Best for:**
- Understanding engineering work without technical background
- Tracking project progress
- Finding relevant issues and discussions
- Reviewing changes and releases

**Setup difficulty:** Easy (requires GitHub personal access token)

## 5. Notion MCP Server (Community)

**What it does:**
Access Notion databases, pages, and wikis from Claude.

**Why it's useful:**
If your company uses Notion for documentation, Claude can now search it. Ask: "What's our process for onboarding enterprise customers?" and Claude finds and summarizes the relevant pages.

**Best for:**
- Searching company wikis
- Finding process documentation
- Accessing meeting notes and decisions
- Understanding team knowledge bases

**Setup difficulty:** Medium (requires Notion API integration)

## 6. Airtable MCP Server (Community)

**What it does:**
Query Airtable bases and tables from Claude.

**Why it's useful:**
Many operations teams use Airtable for project tracking, CRM, inventory, or content calendars. Claude can now read and analyze that data without switching tools.

**Best for:**
- Project status updates
- Content calendar analysis
- Inventory and resource tracking
- Custom CRM queries

**Setup difficulty:** Easy (requires Airtable API key)

## 7. Jira MCP Server (Community)

**What it does:**
Search Jira issues, projects, and sprints from Claude.

**Why it's useful:**
Ask: "What high-priority bugs are assigned to the backend team?" or "Which features are scheduled for the next sprint?" Claude queries Jira and presents organized results.

**Best for:**
- Project status and planning
- Bug tracking and prioritization
- Sprint planning support
- Cross-team coordination

**Setup difficulty:** Medium (requires Jira API token and configuration)

## 8. HubSpot MCP Server (Community)

**What it does:**
Query contacts, deals, and company data from HubSpot CRM.

**Why it's useful:**
Ask business questions like: "Which enterprise deals closed last month?" or "Show me all contacts from healthcare companies in the Northeast." Claude queries HubSpot and analyzes results.

**Best for:**
- Sales pipeline analysis
- Customer segmentation
- Deal tracking and reporting
- Contact research and outreach planning

**Setup difficulty:** Medium (requires HubSpot private app and API key)

## 9. Google Sheets MCP Server (Community)

**What it does:**
Read and analyze Google Sheets spreadsheets directly from Claude.

**Why it's useful:**
Lighter-weight than the full Google Drive server. Perfect if you primarily work with spreadsheets and want faster performance.

**Best for:**
- Financial analysis and reporting
- Data validation and cleanup
- Budget tracking
- Performance dashboards

**Setup difficulty:** Easy (requires Google API credentials)

## 10. Confluence MCP Server (Community)

**What it does:**
Search Confluence spaces, pages, and documentation from Claude.

**Why it's useful:**
Companies with Confluence wikis can now let Claude search all documentation. Ask: "What's our security review process for new vendors?" and Claude finds relevant pages.

**Best for:**
- Finding company policies and procedures
- Searching technical documentation
- Accessing team knowledge bases
- Understanding past decisions

**Setup difficulty:** Medium (requires Confluence API token)

## How to Choose Which Servers to Install

Start with the tools you use daily. If your team lives in Slack and Google Drive, install those two first. See how MCP changes your workflow before adding more.

**Recommended starting combination:**
1. Slack MCP server (for team context)
2. Google Drive or Notion MCP server (for documentation)
3. Database or CRM server (for data access)

These three give you team conversations, documentation, and data - covering most business use cases.

## Installation Tips

All MCP servers follow similar setup:

1. Download or install the server package
2. Get API credentials from the service (Slack, GitHub, etc.)
3. Add server configuration to Claude Code's MCP settings file
4. Restart Claude Code
5. Test by asking Claude to access data from the service

Detailed installation guides coming in next week's tutorial article.

## Performance Considerations

MCP servers add latency. Claude needs to query external services and wait for responses.

**Typical response times:**
- Simple queries (Slack search, GitHub issue lookup): 2-4 seconds
- Database queries: 3-8 seconds depending on complexity
- Document analysis (Google Drive, Notion): 5-10 seconds for large files

This is slower than Claude without MCP, but faster than manually gathering data yourself.

## Security Note

MCP servers run on your machine with your permissions. They can access anything you can access.

**Best practices:**
- Only install servers from trusted sources (official Anthropic servers or well-reviewed community servers)
- Use read-only API tokens when possible
- Don't install servers for highly sensitive systems without security review
- Review what data each server can access before connecting it

## Quick Takeaway

The 10 most useful MCP servers for business teams are: Slack (team context), Google Drive (documents), PostgreSQL (database queries), GitHub (engineering updates), Notion (wiki search), Airtable (project data), Jira (issue tracking), HubSpot (CRM data), Google Sheets (spreadsheets), and Confluence (documentation).

Start with 2-3 servers for tools you use daily. Install more as you get comfortable with MCP workflows.

These servers eliminate copy-paste workflows and let Claude access your company's actual data and context. If you're a Claude Code user doing business operations work, installing MCP servers should be your first priority.