Are You Getting an ROI on Business Technology?

are you getting an roi on business technology

Does thinking about new tech for your small business cause you to stress out? Investing in tech can be a source of great anxiety for many business owners, and often that anxiety comes from concerns over the costs of upgrading small business tech. While cost should certainly be a factor, most businesses need some type of tech to thrive and even survive. So, how can you determine if you’re getting an ROI on business technology? Well, you can get started by answering these key small business tech questions.

How Will You Pay for Business Tech Upgrades?

Acquiring the best new tech for your small business usually requires finding the right funding option. For many business owners, that means looking outward for financial options to help pay for tech updates, especially if major upgrades will provide a major ROI. One way to fund small business updates is to apply for a small business loan.

Lending choices for small businesses include SBA loans, short-term loans, business lines of credit, and equipment financing, among others. You can use online guides to make getting started easier if you think one of these lending options may be right for your tech updates. You can also consider using a small business credit card to fund new tech and benefit from card perks and rewards. 

Will Your Tech Updates Provide a Return on Investment?

Before you consider funding sources, figure out which tech changes will actually help you increase your profits and productivity enough to make the investment worthwhile. For example, some tech can generate additional profits, with low setup costs. A dropshipping business is one such update, which allows you to offer popular online products, such as clothing and electronics, to customers without having to house additional inventory.

You can also look for tech that won’t cost anything to update, like these software tools, to increase ROI for your small business updates. Free small business tech can resolve issues with various processes and elements within your company, but know that these tools typically come with limitations. You may be better off using the funding tips above to pay for tech upgrades for your small business. 

How Can New Tech Make You, and Your Staff, More Productive?

Productivity can help the profitability of your small business. In fact, business experts agree that small businesses need to boost productivity and profits in order to maintain their role in the economy and maintain hopes for long-term success. So, you should come up with your own practices and tools that can boost each one, which can include tech updates.

Evaluating your productivity needs can help, but there are also productivity apps and tools that can make increasing efficiency easy, and make increasing business success effortless. You can use the ever-reliable QuickBooks to simplify accounting processes or a tool like Wunderlist to make task management less time-consuming for your small business team. These tools can solve a variety of productivity challenges for businesses and help those companies grow their overall success.

Will New Tech Help Keep Your Small Business Protected and Secured?

Keeping your small business safe means guarding against online threats. Cyberthreats for small businesses can come in many forms, but each can result in devastating losses that can eventually result in affected businesses closing their doors, according to recent stats. Which is why small business owners need to invest in cybersecurity tools that will defend their companies against potentially devastating attacks from cybercriminals and also provide peace of mind when it comes to securing private data. Because these attacks can still happen, businesses should also put time and effort into developing a data breach response plan that can minimize damage and also keep breach management within current federal regulations to avoid catastrophic legal issues that could cause those businesses to fold.

New tech doesn’t have to be unattainable for your small business. You just need to use the right questions, like the ones above, to develop the right plan for integrating tech updates into your business. Because not only can tech increase your profits and boost your productivity, but the right technology can help your small business survive and thrive for many years to come.

Technology As a Solution To Productivity Barriers

technology as a solution to productivity barriers

In the wake of spiked adoption of technology, many tasks have been revolutionized to improve productivity. As such, it comes as no surprise that technology is viewed as an essential tool for running a business.

Even though technology provides effective solutions for handling business processes, it’s almost impossible to overlook its role in mitigating productivity barriers.

After all, the success of a modern business is measured by its ability to turn efforts into revenue.

This means that an ideal technological solution is one that not only helps you run a business efficiently but also increases the productivity of your staff.

For this reason, here are some software tools to help you avoid productivity hurdles:

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing allows your staff to work remotely on a particular project. This also enhances their collaboration eventually increasing their performance. 

Moreover, moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud saves you the cost associated with maintaining on-site infrastructure. These resources can be channeled to other core areas of your business.

Customer Relationship Management

Customer relationship management software helps your employees respond faster to clients and even sell products/ services easier. This is due to the fact that the software records all the clients’ data in one system, making it easier for your sales team to automate the process; from marketing to selling and everything in between.

VoIP Phone Services

Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) software reduces the downtime, thereby increasing your business’s availability. The software relies heavily on an internet connection; so, as long as you’ve got a stable internet connection, your phone system will be available 24/7.

The software can also transcribe voice messages from customers and email them directly to a customer support desk. This reduces the time spent on retrieving messages from mailboxes, freeing up your staff to concentrate on other important tasks.

 Contact us now for more information on how you can remove productivity barriers with a software.

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Exactly How Old is Your Old Server?

exactly how old is your old server

While almost everyone can appreciate the value of a classic car, “classic” servers do not necessarily hold their value, especially when they decide to fail during a typical workday. Although very large businesses might have a spare server to fall back on, small businesses typically do not. To rely upon an old server, perhaps offering up a daily prayer that it will continue to run properly even though it is showing signs of age, is not a good business plan.

Why Servers Matter

When operating smoothly, servers run quietly and efficiently in the background of an organization. Most users don’t think much about or even see the server(s) they use — but they are the invisible workhorse(s) providing crucial functions for organizations. Servers allow employees to have internet access, they serve up corporate data in applications for viewing and updating, they allow employees to collaborate on group projects, along with many other critical tasks that employees must complete in any given workday. When a server functions properly, a business can function as well. If a company should experience server failure during a workday, it stops most, if not all employees from working altogether.

A Comprehensive Plan 

The best way to avoid receiving an unpleasant surprise from an old server is to prevent it from failing in the first place. Servers have become much to valuable for companies to have a “set it and forget it” attitude. Enlisting a managed service provider is the first step in taking a proactive stance to effectively managing vital technology hardware.

Managed service providers can monitor a company’s essential equipment and alert interested parties when they discern that older equipment needs replacement. MSPs also monitor equipment patches, ensuring that all equipment stays up to date in order to avoid the latest vulnerabilities. Professional managed service providers can also create an effective backup and data recovery plan to ensure that an organization’s data always remains protected no matter what.

If you would like to know more about protecting your organization’s hardware and software capabilities, please contact us.

7 Powerful Uses Of Technology In Business Today

7 powerful uses of technology in business today
Technology

Modern-day businesses have never seen a more streamlined, convenient, and affordable means to collaborate with teams, employees, managers, or business partners — thanks to technology.

These days, almost every industry you can think of utilizes technology in every facet of the business. From brainstorming, production, to product distribution, the dependence on this Omni-system is at an all-time high. It’s safe to say, without it, a business is truncated from a sturdy structure that hinders growth and revenue. If you’re not optimizing technology in your business, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to propel your business into the limelight. Here are the seven powerful uses of technology in business today that entrepreneurs should watch out for.

1. Boosts Marketing

Although the conventional forms of marketing like outdoor advertising still work nowadays, digital marketing is way ahead of the marketing ballgame. Businesses can now leverage different digital marketing strategies depending on their budget and audience. Regardless of the industry, here are the most common types of online marketing tactics gaining popularity in the market today:

  • Social media marketing
  • Content marketing
  • Influencer marketing
  • Email marketing
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
  • PPC (Pay Per Click)
  • Affiliate marketing

2. ERP Integration

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is now a must-have in small- and large-scale businesses today. ERP is a software that streamlines all operations within an organization. Here are some uses of ERP in organizations:

  • Purchasing
  • Inventory management
  • Manufacturing
  • Sales and marketing
  • Financial management
  • Customer relationship management (CRM)
  • Human resource management (HRM)
  • Business intelligence
  • Compliance monitoring
  • Project management
  • IT optimization
  • E-commerce platforms

3. Cloud-Based Services

Cloud computing is the most adapted form of IT collaboration, automation, and computing without the need for hardware installations. That means, businesses can take advantage of applications or software that can store, monitor, and modify data over remote servers. Cloud-based service providers are clamoring for client attention, namely Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and more.

4. Mobile Assimilation

More and more companies have associated their products and services with mobile applications. For instance, home and office security providers have connected their entire systems into mobile apps so customers can access surveillance clips anywhere. Mobile phones may be small, but they’re compelling gadgets that can protect a whole office!

5. Easier Transactions

Financial technology companies, also known as ‘fintech,’ are on the rise. Fintech is paving the way for better, quicker, and easier transaction methods in terms of finances. Consumers can now pay through mobile apps, get a loan online, and apply for insurance from a website. This establishes confidence and reliability between companies and their customers.

6. Robust Security

Nothing is more valuable than customer information. After all, this goes beyond to-and-fro negotiations – trust is an essential factor in safekeeping business partnerships. If you break that trust, you’ll lose regular customers, and word of mouth is going to spread like wildfire. With an upswing in the number of hackers, security companies are making their systems more robust than ever. Firewalls, SSL certificates, WEP, WPA, and all encryption tools are at every business’ disposal.

7. Affordable Outsourcing Solutions

About 40 percent of freelancers will dominate the US workforce by 2020. This is a huge deal for businesses. While this eliminates the additional upkeep of brick-and-mortar offices, server installations, and hardware maintenance, this also gives organizations a more extensive recruitment process that can search for the crème de la crème in the industry worldwide. Companies are no longer limited to in-house employees that cost more. They can hire remote employees and collaborate with them like they’re in the same physical office.

Final Thoughts

The powerful uses of technology are what we need in this digital era. It puts the whole business force in common ground, a level playing field where both neophytes and veteran entrepreneurs can go neck and neck with each other.

Author Bio:

Kerry Brooks is an ardent blogger and frequent traveler who writes about home improvement, travel and the latest trends on emerging technologies. She is currently working with EyeSpySupply, which offers a wide range of surveillance equipment, including wireless spy camera, nanny cams, GPS trackers, and voice activated audio recorders and more.

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Are Increases in Automation Taking Jobs Away from Workers?

are increases in automation taking jobs away from workers

There is increasing speculation about whether automation is taking jobs away from workers, whether it is creating completely new fields, or at least expanding older fields. In reality, both sides of the argument likely offer at least some partial truths. While some workers may very well see their jobs eventually disappear directly because of increases in automation, others will see new opportunities opening up.

Why Automation?

The push for automation generally stems from two loosely related forces. The first force is fairly traditional in nature. Businesses are always looking for ways to keep costs down in order to remain competitive. Repetitive tasks often are the first ones business owners analyze to determine if automation offers a more efficient solution. Over time, it is simply less expensive and more efficient to have machines, software programs, etc. perform repetitive tasks than to have a human perform the same job.

The second driving force behind the push for automation is artificial intelligence. The capabilities of artificial intelligence to go beyond repetitive tasks and actually make intelligent decisions based upon interaction with other machines as well as with humans, is quite phenomenal.

Change Never Stops

Whenever a new industry starts, there are going to be winners and those who lose — hopefully only temporarily. When automotive vehicles became mainstream, many people who made a living driving a horse and carriage, or who made deliveries with a team of oxen, found their services no longer needed. The truth is that change actually never stops. As industries change and new ones created, some individuals find themselves on the forefront, while others may struggle for a time.

Staying Aware and Competitive with Increases in Automation

Just as companies who want to stay in business must continually remain aware of emerging trends, so do employees. As trends come and go, it’s not uncommon for companies to periodically remake themselves almost from the ground up. Workers who want to be part of the workforce for a long time need to be savvy about their employment decisions, and be open to the possibility of training for a different career at some point in their lives. It doesn’t mean every truck driver will have to become a software developer. For the foreseeable future there will always be a need for trade employment such as plumbers, electricians, etc. It just means employees, employers, and society in general, needs to remain vigilant, flexible, and adaptable when inevitable changes actually do occur.  

If you would like to know more about trends in artificial intelligence and/or automation, please contact us!