Nearly half of all companies plan to increase their technology spending in 2020. This is because many have identified technology as the most efficient way to stand out from the competition and, consequently, increase profits.
If you are an entrepreneur looking to make significant technology investments, you may quickly feel overwhelmed by all the options available.
“Which technology in business investments has the greatest impact?” “Where would it be best to invest my limited capital?”
These are questions we hear constantly as small, medium, and even large business owners grapple with how technology is being applied to today’s market and what that might mean for them. To help clarify your questions about technology, below we highlight the top ways technology is being integrated into corporate environments, with the hope of inspiring you!
- Improving Accountability
Whether you like it or not, it can be easy to become complacent when working 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. This complacency often leads to project delays and costly overtime requests.
As a business owner, it is essential to know how efficient your team is being and where improvements need to be made. Companies are investing in tools such as time and attendance software, which can analyze employee activities throughout a shift and share detailed reports on what is working and what is not.
These reports are key to determining who needs help staying focused and who is adding the most value to your organization.
- Enabling Collaboration
Business success rarely comes from a single individual. Success almost always comes from a collective of talents coming together and working together to accomplish incredible things.
Business technology has made this kind of special collaboration much easier over the past decade.
Various cloud-based applications allow employees to work on the same files simultaneously. In addition, sharing files has become as easy as directing team members to a common “shared folder.”
This has eliminated the need to send attachments by email and manually track updates.
- Keeping Data Secure
Imagine if all of your company’s important documents, intellectual property data, and customer information were stored on a single computer. Now imagine that this computer was destroyed in a fire.
How would your company recover?
For many, this is a question they would rather not answer, which is why they have invested in technology that automatically backs up their systems to local and external servers. The best backup technology today automatically performs backups on all of your company’s machines, so team members don’t have to worry about manually triggering backup mechanisms.
- Receive Payments Easily
Sending invoices can be a hassle. Much of this hassle comes from having to manually detail charges on a template, email it to customers, and wait for a response.
Today, companies can integrate with accounting software that allows them to invoice directly from the application. These invoices are pre-generated according to the charges entered into the system and can be tracked to verify when they were opened.
Even better is the fact that customers can pay their invoices with their credit/debit cards directly from their digital invoice!
- Paying the Government Just Got Easier
No matter how much technology you use to file taxes, managing this task will likely continue to be a headache. Still, technology has made filing and reporting taxes more accurate and simplified.
Business technology has integrated accounting and tax filing solutions into integrated systems. This has allowed companies to use tools such as a receipt scanner to automatically track expenses and deduct them from tax documents, as well as manage other tasks that are typically time-consuming.
Even filing your taxes with federal and state authorities can be as simple as clicking “submit”!
- Breaking Down Trade Barriers
Physical operations used to be limited to selling to people in their immediate vicinity. That is no longer the case!
E-commerce allows even the smallest businesses to develop a robust online presence and sell to customers around the world.
This reality is becoming increasingly important to a company’s bottom line as competition becomes more global and local consumer saturation begins to be a problem.
- Engaging Customers Like Never Before
Imagine a world where you can reach a customer based on what they buy, where they live, and their consumption habits? This type of personalized, high-conversion marketing is 100% reality.
More than 60% of the customers you interact with expect personalization to be part of their shopping experience. By investing in technology that enables this, you will meet their expectations. You will also have a great chance to increase consumer engagement.
- Your Office Everywhere
Never before has remote access to your office been so important. Various tools that enable chat, file sharing, remote desktop access, and more work together to make your office available to your team members, no matter where they are in the world.
If you want your company to overcome the challenges of today and tomorrow, it would be great to have an excellent remote work plan in place. This plan should be driven by cutting-edge digital tools.
Technology in business defines success
Companies that embrace technology in business have a much greater opportunity to grow and survive adversity. Keep this in mind when planning your technology budget for this year and beyond.
Technological solutions are constantly evolving. Feel free to stay up to date on all the latest news by browsing the content available on our blog!