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This post was featured by Twinkl in their Tech Trends article
Every business owner seeks to achieve one thing besides profit; growth in their business. It doesn’t matter if your business only serves 500 people or has a board that serves millions worldwide. Growth is an essential metric to decide whether your business is a viable and sustainable venture. To grow your business, you’re likely to develop strong strategies that enable you to keep your products, services, processes, and employees highly efficient and productive – to enable you to scale your operations. This is precisely where technology steps in.
Every growth strategy you consider implementing in this modern era needs technology forming its core or foundation. Here are some effective ways in which you can use tech to grow your business.
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Effective ways to use tech to grow your business
Web-based payments
Global methods for making and receiving payments have drastically increased. Thanks to web-based payment systems, it has become faster and safer for businesses looking to grow. Web-based payment systems are one thing to consider. These systems are flexible, with several payment options to choose from. Web-based payments were relevant during the pandemic when people couldn’t go out to make purchases. Online shopping and payment suddenly became the best preference, so many people still opt for that option even with reduced restrictions. Offering customers with different web-based payments can increase your customer base by bringing in customers who prefer that payment option.
Mobile Optimisation
Mobile slowly crept into everyday life and never left, leaving its mark on all aspects of people’s lives. Most people use mobile devices to surf the web, communicate with loved ones, and make purchases. Optimising all your mobile processes to benefit from this mobile influx is best, considering that most of the mobile demographic are your target audience. If you have a website, ensure it is a mobile-friendly website, and work on other aspects such as mobile sales and mobile marketing. There’s no limit to what mobile can help within your business; do it!
Save on IT expenditure
Many companies complain that huge enterprise software programs often come at a high cost. To make such technologies more affordable for companies, cloud-based technologies, which are almost free, are much easier to come by. These are great tools to grow your business, as they allow for a much more thorough management process. You can have multiple team members working on a single document in real-time, which means you can get more work done within a shorter amount of time.
With such cloud services as your ideal IT support, you might never need an actual IT department within your company. This is a great way for small businesses to save more money, gain free access to their data anytime, and also work from anywhere without needing a physical office.
Use productivity apps
Apps such as Podio, Trello, and Slack are great applications for business owners and managers. With these technologies, you can get more done without much strain within a short amount of time. The good news is that most of these apps are entirely free to use, while others provide specific levels of service at affordable prices. Depending on your needs, you can choose an application that best suits you. All you really need with these apps is a mobile device and internet access.
Virtual assistants
You could hire a virtual assistant if you’re looking for smart tech solutions for your business but with an added human touch. This is a freelancer who takes up heavy tasks to save both you and your team time. Virtual assistants are available on almost all freelancing sites, at great rates, which works well for small businesses.
Use social media
When curating a growth strategy plan, you cannot overlook the need for social media and digital marketing. Over the long term, developing a digital marketing strategy can become one of your most powerful growth tactics once implemented right. People spend endless hours scrolling on their phones, and it’s your responsibility as a business owner to capture their attention and encourage them to invest in your products and services.
You can employ several digital marketing methods but focus on social media because of its potency and ability to generate sales faster. Social media allows you to build a community of engaging and loyal customers who can spread the word about your brand to other communities. With loyal customers and a great service record, you might not have to splurge on paid ads over time, as customers will be coming in organically.
Raise capital
Every business needs money to thrive, and your business is no different. That said, it is possible to use technology in a manner that helps you raise the needed capital for operations. These technologies are available to both small businesses and huge corporations, and the only thing you’ll need to do is market your services and products.
Technology has encouraged the creation of a plethora of crowdfunding platforms designed to enable people to invest in your services from around the globe. Some of these platforms assist startups and businesses in finding angel advisors and investors. In contrast, others allow only qualified investors to put money into ventures with the agreement that they receive equity or a stake in the profits. Thanks to technology, your future capital is only a click or scroll away.
Enhance communication
Communication is ultimately the backbone of every business venture. This strong pillar can make or break your business, so leveraging good communication is essential to growth. The first thing technology can help you with is communication hierarchy and other communication technologies. You can consider investing in a Voice over Internet Protocol system to improve teamwork, output efficiency, and productivity success. Also known as VoIP, this cloud-based solution offers low-cost national and international calls, acting as a fully-digital system for the entire team.
VoIP’s come with full mobile optimisation, with special features such as call forwarding and scheduling, video conferencing, and virtual assistance systems. Liaise with your team members and remote teams easily, thanks to VoIP integrations, and facilitate even more growth in your company.
Measure user engagement
If you want to know your customer loyalty and measure user engagement, you can consider Analytics. This is a hot tool for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. It delivers relevant stats that indicate your user readership in real-time and over a certain period.
Measuring user engagement is a great way to target users from your competition, attracting them to your product or service.
Employ real data
Without data, your business cannot run at its peak expectation. This is because you need to know the metrics behind previous activities to know how best to improve upon or change your activities completely for growth. Every change you implement must be backed by sound, verifiable data which has been adequately analysed. The best way to undertake or utilise big data analytics is by employing the services of artificial intelligence alongside big data analytics. This technological combination collects and collates all data without any monetary investment or time dedication. This information is then easy to use in the form of strategy and actionable items geared towards growth.
Collaborations and teamwork
Another great way to grow your business is to make collaboration and teamwork seamless. Management needs to be able to keep tabs on projects and tasks without micromanaging, which is why technology has introduced the use of countless project management applications. With these applications, you can share, save and find documents. You can also assign tasks to team members with scheduled deadlines they can highlight when done.
Management applications are a great and effortless way to ensure you’re always on track with deliverables and that your remote team puts in the work as much as possible.
Improve user experience
Every business looking to grow organically must work hard to make their customers the cornerstone of their organisation. Your customer’s experience can greatly improve engagement and sales with the right technology. Some common customer technologies include analytics software, ai message responders, and many more. With customer support technologies, you can deliver swift message responses through forums, text, messaging, and telephone, depending on your preferred media. The systems also work hard to respond to more people within a shorter time, which a physical customer support team can sometimes struggle with.
Backup software
Many businesses worldwide are not collapsing because of bad finances or lack of funds. Some are dying because of malicious software and hackers breaching their data and causing customers to lose their trust. Any kind of data breach is dangerous for companies, as it affects their brand reputation; thus, it is essential that, as a company, you stay on top of all data-related things. Invest in enterprise backup software, continuity tools, and recovery systems that employ AI to block all malicious software and files.
Several elements can grow a business, but technology spearheads them all. If you’re looking to build a sustainable and successful business, digital transformation needs to be at the heart of your growth strategy. As a team, be intentional about weaving technology into every task in your schedule and watch as your business surpasses all competitors in little to no time.
