Tech Tips To Organize And Grow Your Business | Productivity
Tech advances are continuously hitting the market and many of them can be adapted to help business owners operate more efficiently. While some innovations boost efficiency, others can help you reach a larger audience and expand your business. The best new technologies, however, are those that help you to both organize and grow your business.
Project Management Software
Project management applications consist of a system that allows you to manage pretty much every aspect of your business. As you might expect, you can manage inventories, expenses, and invoices, but you can also use the system to track time for your employees and to recruit new candidates to fill open positions. More advanced software packages also incorporate chat features that allow you to communicate with anyone in your organization, which means you’re never out of touch.
Artificial Intelligence and Voice-Activated Assistants
A.I. technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, necessitated by the revolution of the Internet of Things. These two areas of technology first started merging with voice assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Voice Assistant. As the technologies continue to evolve, A.I. will be used more commonly to allow you to connect with smart home devices, but how does this help your business? Already, you can install a voice assistant in your business, which can perform complex calculations faster than your employees and help you pull up needed information on the spot. Additionally, analysts expect web searches to be conducted without a screen, now that devices like Alexa can already pull up information for the best neighborhood pizza place or order tickets for the theater. It won’t be long, before businesses learn to target consumers via this technology.
Ditch the Desktop
It may not be long before desktop computers are a thing of the past in businesses, as well as in homes. The majority of people are relying on mobile devices more often, because it allows them to stay connected on the go. This is especially true for business executives. Advances in mobile technology make smaller devices just as powerful and useful as desktops in many cases, adding the convenience of mobility to the mix. This means you can email a copy of your latest expense report to your bookkeeper, while riding back to the office from lunch. Mobile technology is letting businesses accomplish much more in a day.
Cloud Technology
Speaking of invoices and bookkeeping, cloud technology is almost eliminating the need to retain your own bookkeeper. Many companies now use accounting software that relies on a barcode scanner system and stores the information in a cloud account, so it’s accessible from any device. This means you can look at your accounts payable records from your own home or send a copy of your taxes to your attorney with the touch of a button. These platforms are typically easy to install and very user friendly.
A Different Type of Marketing Analytics
Most marketing analytics applications focus on what your customers are searching for and what pages they spend time on, when they visit your website. The next generation is taking analytics in a new direction, giving you insight into what your competition is doing and how you rate, compared to your competitors. Many newer applications can even tell you what consumers think of your brand or products, which can help you reassess your marketing campaigns.
Social Media Analytics
You no longer have to rely on individual social media sites to find out what users think of your brand. Instead, new apps can analyze your sphere of influence over the social media sites you use to tell you which users are your best advocates. You can also find out which influencers are promoting your brand and which ones haven’t engaged with your pages. The rising importance of social media makes these apps valuable tools.
Utilizing new tech advances to organize your business can often help you grow your business and vice versa. The attraction to many of the new software applications is that they can be attained for free or at a low cost, helping small businesses and new entrepreneurs grow and organize their business without driving up their operating costs. As technology continues to improve, it may make business growth simpler, even for those without a keen understanding of how those technologies function.
Kevin Faber has been in the commercial finance and banking industry for most of his professional life. He graduated at UC Davis with a B.A. in Business/Managerial Economics. His experience in credit analysis, finance, and management led him to be the founder of Silver Summit Capital. He enjoys working in the financing industry and building connections with industry leaders.
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