No businesses can downplay the crucial role technology plays in their operations and survival. Whether big, small or medium-sized, enterprises need to identify ways they can beneficially leverage technology to grow. Here are a few strategies your business can adopt to stimulate the digital transformation.
1. Become More Data Driven
Data is the new oil. That’s a refrain that you will likely encounter and for good reason. Technology has encroached on more industries and executives are finding that the best way to view it is as a layer over all types of business.
The exponential increase in technological breakthroughs has meant that there is an infinitely more significant amount of data firms are producing now than at any other time in history. Your business needs to gather as much data as it can and glean valuable insights that will help drive growth.
Such a necessity is further seen in the rising provision of database administration and development courses geared towards database adoption. The first step for any company is to hire qualified personnel who can develop and sustain a database from which the organization can mine the data. Useful insights that you can glean can touch on:
- Customer behavior patterns that can help uncover an unmet need.
- Customer feedback on existing products and services that can contribute to tweaking the firm’s offering.
- Patterns and trends that herald the opening of a new opportunity.
- Better pricing strategies based on market feedback analysis.
Businesses that move towards focusing on deploying valuable and actionable data strategies are poised to become the leaders of the new technology-driven age.
2. Automate, Automate, Automate
The exponential rise on technological breakthroughs has had the positive side effect of bringing down the cost of service automation. In the face of such advantage, companies need to graft automation into their operations to optimise efficiency and other gains.
Some aspects of customer acquisition can now be automated to help lower customer acquisition costs (CAC) while being more efficient. Chatbots are an alternative to customer service representatives who are meant to handle non-dynamic and repeatable tasks like answering frequently asked questions. Using chatbots to manage this class of customer queries will reduce the need for hired staff while being available day or night.
There are relatively affordable payroll, accounting and customer relationship management (CRM) software that your business can leverage to operate more efficiently, minimise costly errors and reduce overall staff headcount.
Automating those parts of the company’s operations that are well defined and repeatable will yield more lean benefits that can be reallocated elsewhere to stimulate growth.
3. Move to the Cloud
Relatively affordable technological innovations have given rise to the cloud economy. There now exist service providers who, for a fee, will host your firm’s data on their remote servers. As a result, the information technology (IT) costs associated with leveraging data analytics among other strategies comes down considerably.
Compare the costs of sourcing and servicing your own IT infrastructure versus outsourcing it to third-party providers as you move to the cloud. The latter ensures that you can access your data no matter the device you’re on or time zone you’re in.
Your data is secured to prevent malicious actors from accessing it without you having to bear the significant infrastructure costs.
Since the software-as-a-service (SAAS) package offered by data center service providers only charges you for your proportion of usage, you can use your data and ensure its security at much better rates. You can then plough back the savings or increase profit distributions to stakeholders.
Technology is a layer covering every sector, and your business needs to get ahead of it to reap the gains. Map your firm’s objectives and needs to successfully match them to existing technology that can deliver efficiency and cost competitiveness.
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