How Tech Can Give Your New Business a Head Start
Incorporating tech in your business is one the smartest moves you can make, whether you’re just starting out or want to revamp your operations. It encourages innovation, improves efficiency, and facilitates versatility in the face of new opportunities. Although sacrifices have to be made during the transition period, usually the pluses of tech far outweigh the negatives.
In today’s post, we discuss six ways in which you can use tech to improve your new business and give it a solid head start.
1. Productivity
Tech streamlines the functions which get a job done and this increases productivity in the long run. Take an example of adding a digital filing system to an office environment – this tool can be quite useful in enhancing processes like saving, finding, sorting, and sharing of documents.
With the ability to synchronize your business documents on cloud storage, office and other administrative tasks can be managed even while on the move thereby reducing downtime which is often a productivity killer.
Tech also allows you to integrate time tracking software which helps you analyze how you spend time in different areas of your business. With this, you’re able to enhance time accountability which is a crucial factor in boosting overall results in a business.
2. Marketing
To improve the visibility of your goods and services in your target industry, marketing has to play a central role. Tech increases your business outreach by facilitating channels that easily connect it to potential customers. A good example is the rise of social media platforms which have now become key promotion podiums for businesses today. Unlike in the past where entrepreneurs had to spend lots of money placing ads on newspapers and magazines, it’s now cheaper and more convenient doing the same on popular social channels like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Further, tech has promoted email marketing which when combined with CRM tools help to significantly boost the customer outreach process.
3. Financial management
Truth be told, new businesses work on limited capital, which means they need to be smarter and efficient with the little available. Today, there’s no shortage of technological tools to help you save more time and money while boosting your business earnings.
For example, you can now file all your taxes online to eliminate the manual paperwork process that can be a real time-suck and incredibly tedious. Also, it’s now possible to accurately track your income and expenditure with tools like QuickBooks and Sage which are less prone to errors.
What’s more, entrepreneurs without bookkeeping knowledge can easily outsource these tasks without needing to meet the experts physically. Finally, modern accounting systems are capable of centralizing material data that is useful in preparing income statements, balance sheets, and other obligatory financial declarations.
4. Networking and learning
Before the inception of the web, new business owners had to attend trade fairs to network with like-minded individuals. However, a lot has changed in the past decade with technology having revolutionized how people interact with one another.
Today, you can launch a teleconference using apps like Skype and Facebook Live or create social groups where you can interact with others on everything concerning managing a business. Additionally, the internet has triggered the rapid growth of online business academies and courses that offer valuable tips and knowledge based on the experience of other entrepreneurs.
5. Mobility
For the longest time, businesses had been conditioned to run in physical offices which are quite costly to set up and maintain. However, the technology is quickly altering that with new businesses now able to run virtually on mobile devices. You no longer have to spend huge amounts of money renting an office space on that busy street to run your business. Instead, use that money on buying more powerful computers or software to improve how you reach your audiences on the web. For example, you can invest in great email marketing tools, social media and search engine ads, and a quality VoIP tech service for more affordable calls.
6. Customer service
In a traditional business environment, an office is hardly complete without a receptionist to offer help services to customers. However, when running an online, you don’t need to spend money hiring to fill this position as you can use tools like live chatbots and email autoresponders to interact with your clients even when you’re offline.
Besides, you can also leverage the power of social media to collect useful feedback which is key in improving how you serve your audience. Finally, you can easily create informative FAQs pages to provide quick solutions to common problems your customers are facing when using your products or services.
Do you think using technology has helped your business serve your customers better? What new areas are you looking to automate for quicker results and reduced work? We’d like to hear your feedback in the comments section below.