Look into
7Stacks and
StandaloneStack, these allow you to create a "menu" of programs that are accessed via a single icon pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar.
StandaloneStack looks and works like the stacks in MacOS, where
7Stacks looks more like a built-in windows feature, and it supports transparency.
I created one for MS-Office, and another for video editing/conversion. All told, about 20 programs from 2 icons.