Technology can be a great and wonderful thing. It can also lead to some difficult problems. Thankfully, when it comes to the world of business, the benefits of using technology outweigh the cons. You can make some significant improvements to your business processes using technology. As the Media Director at Driven Media Solutions, I consistently sign off using new technology within our company. This implementation of technology has led to a massive benefit to our services.
It should be noted that implementing technology for its sake won’t work. You need to make sure that the technology you’re using has a purpose in your organisation. If you don’t, your team aren’t going to take the changes well, and you’re going to end up spending money on a system that people won’t use. This is why it’s crucial to implement some change management procedures. This will ensure that your teams will embrace the change and the need for it.
Technological change needs to be carefully managed to avoid large expenses that can quickly become an electrically powered money-hole for your company. That’s why we’ll be going over how you can use technology to improve your business processes.
Improved Communication and Collaboration In Your Business Processes
There’s already a wealth of available tools that businesses can use to improve collaboration and communication. Studies have shown that using electronic means of communicating and collaborating can improve productivity per conversation by 20%-25%. This is a massive increase and shows these tools’ needs in your business. Furthermore, with the COVID-19 pandemic still in full swing, more companies need to turn to electronic communication to get things done. The rise of Zoom, Microsoft Teams and other technologies show this.
So, the question is, what kind of tools can you use? I would suggest several different tools based on what you need. In terms of team communication, Slack is a great option. It allows you to create different communication channels for teams and individuals. You can lock these chats for privacy purposes, and you can even send across files and make calls within these chats. Being able to talk to your colleagues rapidly can increase productivity.
Also, in terms of collaboration, one tool you should be using is Google Drive. This also means all of the other assorted programmes that go with it. Using Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets, you can add other users to the files you’re editing. This means that people can leave notes, comments for action and then resolve these comments when they’re finished. This allows teams to work on things simultaneously, which would lead to them being finished quicker.
Connect With Customers More Effectively
Using technology within your business can improve your business processes with your customers and prospects. Firstly, if you’re not using a CRM already, what are you doing? Money isn’t even an excuse at this point, as you can get many free CRMs like HubSpot, Zoho and many more. HubSpot is a great entry-level option and will allow you to track the progress of your deals as they’re in progress. You can also add direct business contacts and their companies into your CRM. If you’re not using a CRM, you may lose customers through inefficiency.
You can also utilise other technology forms to better interact with your customers. For example, chatbots are becoming more advanced and using a good one on your website can be great. This is because when people are latently browsing your website, it presents a Call-To-Action to interact with your website. This, in turn, will allow you to speak to more customers and potentially close more deal, rather than wasting your website visitors.
Ultimately, every customer that you fail to connect with is money lost. Do you want to keep losing money on potential sales? Of course, you don’t. So let this serve as a warning to you that you should be using technology to connect with your customers, or your competitors will.
Give Your Employees More Flexibility at Work
This is an integral part of your business processes for many different reasons. Once again, the COVID-19 pandemic has made something that business bosses called impossible possible. More people worked from home before the pandemic than ever before, but it still wasn’t a lot. Companies didn’t always see the benefits of working from home, and offering that flexibility was a perk at work. Nowadays, that’s becoming less of a bonus and more of a right to flexible working conditions. Your employees have lives, and making sure they have flexibility can decrease your employee turnover.
If you’re finding that your employees want more flexibility in work, you should send out an anonymous employee survey. This way, I know your teams will tell you what they want. This saves you from implementing something that your team doesn’t want, like a pool table in the office, which will just cost money. It won’t improve productivity. Then, once you have your feedback, you’ll activate it and implement the feedback.
When making decisions that impact your employees and how they work, it’s best to get their input first. Failing to do so will set you up as the boss from hell—alternatively, someone throwing a lot of money away for nothing.
Use Social Media To Reach More People
Social media is a massive part of a business’ processes, and it’s crazy how far we’ve come since the sites like Six Degrees. Nowadays, your business has to be online. I didn’t put enough effort into the social media of my first business WriteEasy, and it suffered. Now, at Driven Media Solutions, we put out a social media post every single day. Are you telling me you’re not going to use a resource like this? It’s free. You should use it.
One of the first things you need to think about when using social media is your audience? One common mistake companies make on social media is trying to appeal to everyone. Think about the most likely people to need your products and then communicate the benefits through your social media. For example, your customers need a good telephone system to focus on the low down-time of your services.
People have short attention spans on social media. This is part of why you need to communicate the benefits rather than the features. You also need to make sure that your content is punchy and attention-grabbing enough to get good engagement. This way, you’ll have even more people seeing your content online.
Use Automation To Save Time and Money
Automation is fantastic. Wherever I can implement automation effectively into my business, I do it. Why, you ask? I do it because I don’t spend time working through menial tasks. I end up doing my more meaningful work. Automation allows for all of the little things that become time-consuming after a while to become less of a problem. For example, you can automate your website to send out a welcome email when a customer registers, rather than sending it manually. Things like this have a significant cost/time impact on businesses and improve profitability.
Another example of a way that automation can save you time and money is that it can be used for your invoicing. Say, for instance, you want a customer to buy your services from your website. You can implement a feature on your site that allows you to have your customer input their details, what they want, and then an invoice will be automatically generated and sent for them to pay. This paid invoice will then be sent to the accounts team to file away.
These are just a couple of examples. I could go on all day about how automation will change business and make everything easier. It will, but the amount of information on it is vast. Look into it for yourself and think about implementing automation into your business.
Improve Your Customer Satisfaction Business Processes
There are several ways tech can be used to help make your customers more satisfied. For example, firstly, technology can track customer behaviour on your site. You can then use this behavioural data to improve your marketing and website content to appeal to these customers. It can also help you develop new products by getting an idea of what your customer wants.
Furthermore, online habits are continually changing, and people don’t necessarily want to call into your company or send an email. I don’t like spending more time getting set up as a customer than I need to. For example, you can quickly implement self-checkout systems so that I don’t have to call in to get the products I want. This will also help customers to be able to get what they need, even if they’re looking at your business outside of your office hours.
So, if you’re looking for ways to improve your customer satisfaction, it’s pretty simple. Look at how you will cut out the waste and make it so that there are no barriers to your customers getting your services.
Improve Your Cybersecurity Business Processes
Unfortunately, the rapid improvement in technology has also made hackers more powerful. You can see contemporary examples of failed cybersecurity leading to hacks worldwide. The WannaCry ransomware attack spread across the world and had the NHS in a complete panic, with the victim count reaching over 200,000. Furthermore, you have the example of the need for cybersecurity that can be found in the attack on Equifax, which comprised the information of over 147.9 Million people.
Not only do businesses have a damaged reputation, but data regulatory authorities can also issue fines for these types of mistakes. This is why we utilise multiple layers of security at Driven Media Solutions to keep our customer’s information safe. If you want to improve your business’s cybersecurity, you should consider hiring a cybersecurity consultant. They will be able to review your existing infrastructure and advise on better protecting your customers.
If you’re in the UK, you can also get some more information on your data protection responsibilities and the steps you need to take to protect customer data. You can find this information by visiting the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) website. They have a range of useful tools and articles for your use on their site.
Conclusion
In closing, it can be seen that the rapid development of technology has given businesses a massive boost in terms of their business processes. Firstly, you will foster healthier and more immediate communication within your teams. This means that there will be fewer misunderstandings, ultimately saving you money. Additionally, collaboration tools will allow you to take less time on tasks and get them done quicker through consistent group-effort.
You will also effectively communicate with your customers a lot more easily. This can be achieved by using social media to convey your brand message and benefits. Social media’s advantage is the vast user-bases that you can communicate with enormous numbers of people. Using social media will lead to you getting a lot more leads and sales in general.
You will save time and money by using automation to remove waste in your processes. Doing this and utilising technology in other ways will make it so that your customer’s satisfaction levels with your company are as high as they can be.
Finally, by utilising effective cybersecurity technology, you will keep your customer’s data safe under lock and key. This is important as a data breach can lead to a lot of lost faith from your customers, as well as costly penalties from regulatory authorities in your country.