Technology is something you can’t ignore in business today. Without the ability to use new productive tools, you won’t have the time in the day to do as much as your competition. That’s why the global tech industry was expected to reach a value of $5 trillion in 2021.
There is a lot to look into regarding technology development, so it pays to understand what options you have. Keep reading to learn six strategies to help your small business take advantage of technology.
1. Create a Project Management Plan
It isn’t easy to manage projects in modern business. You have countless things to keep track of, so it isn’t easy to do things manually. Without the right tools, it’s a constant effort to keep track of everything going on and keep people on the same page.
New technology has made the job of a project manager easier. Instead of relying on old forms of communication and management, you can now use online tools to streamline the project management process.
Cloud project management tools allow you to organize projects, assign tasks to employees, and manage all project communication. It doesn’t matter where someone in your team is located in the world. Anyone can check on the system to figure out what they need to do, get critical details, and let people know what they need for the job.
2. Add Remote Capabilities
People don’t work from the office all the time in today’s world. Now that people have gotten a taste of remote work, many employees don’t want to go back to the old way of doing things.
The problem for employers is that the market favors employees at the moment. If you don’t offer a great work environment with the right perks, you’ll lose talented employees to your competition.
You’ll need to offer remote capabilities to your team members if you want to keep them around. Give them the ability to connect to the office from home or anywhere else in the world.
Of course, you’ll also need to secure those employees working remotely. Set up a VPN to create an encrypted tunnel to your office. Doing this means that all internet traffic on your employees’ machines is encrypted and won’t get compromised.
3. Upgrade From Email
Email works great for communicating, but it doesn’t work great when you need to get people together for a meeting. Sure, you can use conference calls. But that isn’t as personal and doesn’t offer the ability to show your work.
Upgrading to video conferencing software is the solution to this problem. You can get everyone in your team on a video call to handle your meetings.
This is great for remote employees who don’t always get to see their colleagues and people who need to conduct business from out of town.
On top of that, you can share your computer desktop with modern video conferencing software. That means you can create presentations, videos, and anything else you can think of for your team meetings.
4. Create Knowledge Bases
It’s not easy to share knowledge when you have employees that handle specific jobs. You count on them to handle everything, so it’s a problem when they aren’t around, and nobody else has the knowledge to keep things running.
An internal knowledge base will stop that from happening. Instead of allowing individuals to hoard knowledge, have them put everything they know in writing. The knowledge base is where that information goes.
When you go this route, anybody can look in your knowledge base to figure out what to do. It will also help new employees get up to speed on company processes.
5. Get Help From Experts
If all you need to do is set up a few computers here and there, you may not need much help with technology. However, things start changing drastically when your company grows, and you need more technology to run.
In this case, it pays to get expert IT help. However, it isn’t cheap to hire someone full-time for the job. Even if you do want to go that route, you may need several employees to get the help your business needs.
Luckily, you can outsource your company’s tech needs to a managed IT company. Your IT provider can offer IT troubleshooting, security help, and much more.
If that wasn’t enough, you’d probably save money by only paying for the IT services you need.
6. Automate Key Tasks
With how much you need to accomplish in business these days, it’s easy to get caught up in simple tasks. From data entry to appointment scheduling, there are countless things people need to do.
That’s where automation helps. You can accomplish many of your regular tasks by relying on software to handle the job. There are countless programs for every business task you can think of.
Of course, you may work in an industry with unique tasks that don’t fit what regular software handles for you. That’s where custom software comes into play.
You have the possibility of working with a nearshore software development company to handle your company’s unique needs. If you can describe what you need in detail, a development company can implement software for you.
Don’t Stop Investing in Technology Development
There’s a lot that technology can offer businesses, so you can’t afford to rest easy and not use everything available to your business. With so many companies focusing on technology implementation, you’ll fall behind if you don’t keep up. Use the technology development strategies above to improve the way your business uses tech.
If you want to learn more about the latest tech you can use in business, head back to the blog to check out the newest technology posts.