It’s the age of digital transformation wherein new technologies are running rampant throughout the world – opening up endless possibilities in terms of both opportunities and challenges.
As the complexity and scope of technology continues to evolve at an incredibly fast rate, businesses all over the place are able to access more innovative solutions that help them improve processes, customer experience, and the work environment as a whole.
Is technology helping your business achieve new heights?
What do we mean by that? Well, technology should act as a business-enabler – helping you reach short and long-term objectives instead of simply sitting in the background costing tons of money every month. The accessibility of advanced, innovative technology enables businesses like yours to thrive and should be a source of competitive advantage across all areas – training, sales, recruiting, sourcing, logistics, accounting, marketing, and more.
Business Insider wrote a great article that can be found here in three ways technology can improve businesses and the way they operate. They outlined the following interesting points on using technology to work faster, smarter, and in a more organized manner:
- Keeping track of customer information using a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that lets you keep everything in one place, including contact information, products and/or services they’ve purchased, marketing campaigns they’ve been sent, feedback they’ve offered you, and more.
- Improving the management of finances with accounting software that lets you keep watch of your income and cash-flow through easy-to-follow reports on your current financial situation. This simplifies invoicing while ensuring you know where you’re at financially all the time.
- Making smarter business decisions by using a business intelligence platform that keeps all data organized and ready to analyze. Essentially, you’re able to gather crucial information from data – helping you make more sound, strategic choices on a day-to-day basis.
The three points listed above are only the beginning of the many ways technology can help your business achieve new heights. Forbes also wrote a blog post that talked about how innovative companies are leveraging technology to improve customer service.
In their article, they mentioned an interesting statistic Forrester found in their research. Did you know 77% of US adults believe valuing their time is the most important thing any business can do to ensure exceptional customer service? That’s why the top companies design their products and/or services from a human perspective.
Think about it: how often do you see companies allowing you to purchase and scan tickets with your smartphone? How about making deposits to your bank account on any mobile device? Or all the self-service options we’re seeing nowadays? It’s all about simplifying your customer’s life wherever you can.
How can you make sure you’re using technology to stay agile while improving customer service?
It’s all about working with a good technology solutions provider. When you choose to partner with a technology solutions provider, make sure you’re choosing one that offers a fully-managed approach instead of break/fix services when possible. Why? Because break/fix is no longer enough for the average business.
How does a fully managed approach differ to the traditional break/fix approach?
You depend on your critical systems throughout the day, but unfortunately, they can fail at the worst of times. This leaves you with expensive, frustrating downtime. In the past, break/fix worked well because we as a society weren’t so reliant on our information technology.
Nowadays, the average business NEEDS access to their critical systems. Otherwise, they’re left struggling with lost productivity, lost data, sales and service problems, and a whole host of other issues. A fully managed approach avoids this – giving you peace of mind at all times.
You’re able to feel confident knowing problems are eliminated before they even have a chance to impact you and your team. All systems are monitored on a regular basis, and when issues arise, they’re resolved immediately. All systems are also protected and kept up-to-date. If something is aging, it’s replaced before it causes issues.
This means you get to rest assured knowing you’ll always benefit from the following advantages:
- Greater collaboration with partners, clients, and colleagues.
- Minimal issues resulting in downtime.
- Enhanced security against malware of all types.
- Improved cash-flow with a flat-rate monthly fee that’s easy to predict.
- And much more
How do I know my technology is ready to help my business achieve new heights?
A good technology solutions provider will offer a fully-managed approach that helps your business achieve new heights with:
- Better teamwork as cloud-based platforms will improve collaboration – helping staff members work together, share information, communicate as needed, and stay accountable during projects, no matter where they are or what device they’re using.
- Greater output as all tasks that can be automated will be automated and all slow performing systems will be replaced to ensure the quickest possible workflow. This means better sales, as that’s more often the result of greater output due to employees working efficiently.
- Less unexpected surprises as a fully-managed approach mean we’re doing all of the necessary budgeting and strategizing to prevent any sort of unexpected refreshes, issues, or upgrades that could have been planned and prepared ahead of time.
- More profitability as you’re working smarter and more organized than ever before with better teamwork, greater output, and less unexpected surprises. This all works together to help you become a more profitable company that’s able to compete in the marketplace.
When you’re getting started, a good technology solutions provider will review the challenges you’re currently dealing with, as well as your short and long-term objectives, then identify what solutions should be invested in. They’ll make a strategic plan wherein they’ll take everything they learn and outline what priorities need to be accomplished.
Once they’ve created a strategic plan and obtained buy-in from all executives within the company, they’ll get started – making sure to prepare for the unexpected and stay in communication with you every step of the way. You should also expect remote or onsite support as needed.
Did you enjoy learning about how to leverage technology to achieve new heights? If so, click here to check out our blog filled with technology tips, tricks, and news.
