We often hear about technology stealing jobs and making certain industries redundant. However, technology can also greatly enhance and improve your organisation, and drive your profits through the roof. By digitising your small business and using automation to streamline processes, you could see a huge increase in profitability. Here’s how to harness the power of technology and boost those margins.
1) Improve Efficiency
As your business grows, it is necessary to streamline processes in order to increase efficiency and save time. Today’s technology, such as business process management software and customer relations management solutions, allow companies to optimize their business procedures. This makes it easier to restructure and automate repetitive processes, cutting down on both man-hours and mistakes.
2) Better Customer Service
Technology allows you to provide excellent, round-the-clock customer service without breaking the bank. You can use chatbots to answer customer queries or outsource chat support, so that you can be there for your customers 24/7. You can also offer your customers omni-channel support which syncs all communication channels together, creating a seamless and more efficient experience.
3) Remote Working
Technology not only allows you to improve your business, but to save money whilst doing so. One significant way to do this is by offering remote working. Research by Forbes found that staff who work remotely save their employers an average of $22,000 per year. On top of this, a study by Stanford found that remote employees are 13% more productive, take fewer sick days and report higher job satisfaction. Therefore, employing technology to encourage remote working can help you get more out of your staff whilst saving significant money.
4) Reduce Costs
Technology also offers small businesses many money-saving benefits beyond remote working. For example, switching your landline to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which works via your internet connection, can save you significant money over time, as well as encouraging more efficient communication.
You can also use automation to fulfil menial tasks to save man hours and free up staff time to focus on high priority, profit-generating duties. You can automate many different office tasks, including:
- Social media posts
- Computer backups
- Proofreading
- Paying bills
- Email responses
- Filtering applicants when hiring
5) Improve Productivity
Productivity is directly related to profitability. As discussed, technology can make employees more productive by facilitating remote working. However, there are many other ways you can harness the power of technology to increase productivity. For example, technology can allow you to gamify your office, which helps to motivate employees. You can also use gamification to increase participation and engagement rates in online training and courses.
You can also use collaborative software and tools to encourage organisation and consistency amongst your workforce. This is particularly valuable when employees are working remotely, as it ensures that everyone is on the same page and feels valued and involved.
6) Smarter Marketing
Technology can really enhance your marketing and help you to get more out of your budget. It can help to create personalised marketing campaigns and allow you to split-test your marketing materials to fine-tune your strategy and find out what works best for your business. It’s also possible to use artificial intelligence to gather data on your target audience and thus create more accurate marketing campaigns that speak directly to them.
Summary
Technology can enable you to build a faster, better and more profitable business, driving your costs down whilst increasing output. On top of this, technology can help you increase sales by helping you create more targeted and impactful marketing campaigns. If you’re serious about driving up your profits, it’s time to take advantage of all that modern technology has to offer.
