Almost every business conceivable has a digital presence today, from the cheap noodle shop next door to the massive upscale supermarket an hour’s drive away. But simply having a website isn’t going to cut it anymore.
Companies today increasingly use information technology to improve their productivity in a number of key sectors. Consider going digital in the following areas to improve your business’s overall efficiency and boost your bottom line.
- Make Human Relations Great Again
Ah, the HR department. From sifting through piles of resumes to reminding employees about casual Fridays, HR has never been particularly glamorous — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t critical. After all, obtaining and retaining the best people is probably the most important thing a business can do to ensure its long-term viability. And fortunately, big data is coming to the rescue.
There’s an increasing number of cloud-based software services, such as Talentsoft, that provide easy solutions for businesses to find and interview the best candidates for a position. These services crunch vast amounts of data that would take ages for humans to complete. That’s much easier than letting resumes pile up and hoping for the best.
There’s also a host of performance appraisal software available that can help employees provide constructive feedback, which means less time and money spent on HR and better suited candidates for a position.
- Make Sales Simple
Sales is an excellent place to start implementing digital solutions to improve productivity. If you’re not conducting at least part of your sales online at this point, you need to reconsider.
Tweak your business’s website, so customers can obtain exclusive deals by signing up for newsletters and the like. You can also add a custom ordering section, so your clients can order products without visiting the store only to discover what they want just went out of stock.
A price estimator on your websites can save your employees time and effort, and you can adjust your website to offer more customized products as well. Such services are simple additions that could provide significant benefits.
- Harness Social Media in Your Marketing Efforts
Everyone’s talking about social media, and there’s a reason for that: Social media is an easy and almost completely cost-free way to boost productivity. If your business can creatively engage customers online, you will experience raised product awareness, which can mean more sales.
How does social media make your business more productive? It’s free, but it’s also efficient as a way to reach existing and potential clients. If you own a small business, you can manage your own social media relatively easily.
If you’re a medium-sized business, consider hiring a “growth hacker” to create authentic engagement that will translate into added visibility and sales. Hiring a growth hacker usually comes with a onetime fee, and it can be a good solution if you don’t want to spend too much effort trying to build an audience on social media — a process that can be hit or miss.
- Revolutionize Your Internal Communications
Remember your employee’s face at the latest meeting when it was clear she hadn’t read the company-wide memo? Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again. Research shows that poor internal communication in a business leads to obvious losses of productivity. When your employees aren’t up to date, or managers are not giving clear orders or opportunities for feedback, your business will suffer.
Fortunately, easy digital solutions can improve the productivity of your workers through better communications. User-friendly services, such as Slack, make sure employees can quickly and efficiently communicate with each other or within different groups. Slack makes it easy to form teams that communicate directly with each other, making it efficient to share files and search archives — a much less painful task than trawling through your email to find an old PowerPoint presentation.
Going Digital Makes Sense for Everyone
It doesn’t matter if your business is large or small. Digitizing basic processes by going paperless makes financial sense. For small businesses in particular, the rewards can be even greater. Employees often waste time looking for documents — some firms waste as much as 6 hours per employee per week. It’s no secret that going paperless helps the environment and saves supply costs. Besides making your employees more productive, digitalization will make your business more efficient and help your bottom line.
The Time Is Now
Running a tight ship in our current “knowledge economy” means going digital. Beneficial digital solutions are currently in vogue for a good reason: They cut costs and allow you to focus on your core business, which, as any good boss knows, consists largely of keeping your employees and clients happy. Once you accomplish that, the rest will come easily.
