How to Improve Business Performance With Technology - Business Upside
These past two years have been mainly focused on business resilience, and companies pivoting their operations to survive the impacts of COVID-19. On the other hand, 2022 is forecasted to be a year that is focused on growth and scaling the business.
The last two years have shown the absolute necessity for digital platforms, online solutions, and next-generation technology in organizations around the world. Whether this technology is needed to support remote employees, or a client base that has drastically shifted over the period, the need for change is apparent.
So, with this in mind, we thought we would unpack some of the key technologies in which you should invest in 2022. In this article, we’ll outline some of our favorite solutions that can improve your business performance.
If you haven’t already migrated to the cloud, now is the time. Numerous companies globally found themselves trapped when the restrictions and lockdowns were implemented. Not only could employees not access vital information and operations, but clients were also left high and dry in an incredibly stressful time.
Cloud services are certainly one of our most recommended considerations for your business. In this day and age of remote access, mobile dependent clients and employees that operate more remotely than ever, this will be a business-saver.
Cloud migration not only increases the overall security of your data and information but also makes access to it more seamless. It provides regular updates to the infrastructure and ensures overall flexibility in the organization.
It is also more cost-effective than having physical hardware. Not only does hardware need to be permanently maintained, but it also requires regular updates to be able to cater to the continuous increase in data. Physical hardware is also more likely to crash or experience a critical issue.
Update Your Database Application
Not only do you want your data and information to be safely stored and easy to access, but you will also want a database application that actually works. Here, we are talking about applications like Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, and MySQL.
Currently, one of the biggest challenges facing these applications is data security as well as declining performances with the application. Thousands of companies have migrated their applications to more robust platforms, to counter these challenges.
Luckily, there are services that allow you to easily shift your application over to a better solution. For example, hiring a Microsoft Access programmer provides a high ROI for your company if you are considering scaling your business in the next year.
The right solution will ensure that you do not experience much or any downtime in between shifts. It will also vastly improve the speed of your database. Additionally, it will create a new structure, which will allow future scalability for data, as well as protect your data from various threats and breaches.
A knowledge hub is a collection of data and content from your company that can be accessed by various parties. This content can be either visible to your clients, or to your employees, or even both. This access to content can help in streamlining various processes in the company, as well as improve customer engagement.
Let’s provide an example. Say you are a tech company providing tech solutions to clients. You can create an accessible platform for clients to access for all of their questions, problems, and troubleshooting. Here you can create useful how-to’s, FAQ-type answers, and overall informative content about your products and services. Not only will this be highly useful and informative to your client and reduce the frequency of contact with your company, but it could also heighten SEO.
By creating blog-like content around these topics, and indexing these pages, Google will be able to use this to rank you more accurately on search engines. If you make this knowledge base public, you will also be able to increase traffic and conversions by showing up in search results. Think about it, if someone is already searching “how to fix”, or “how to make x faster”, and your site comes up with the solution as well as a superior product, you are likely to convert them.
Integrate Collaborative Tools
One frequently overlooked aspect of business growth is employee productivity. Not only do you need to constantly keep your staff motivated and productive, but you also need to have a firm understanding of the productivity levels.
There are various online platforms that can be used to heighten productivity. Applications like monday.com or Trello are great examples of project-based tools that allow users to collaborate on projects virtually. You are able to assign members to projects, track the progress, set deadlines, monitor time spent, and be alerted when things are complete. Most tools are also able to integrate various other platforms, like real-time communication.
Slack is another tool that allows team members to communicate in real-time with each other. It provides one-on-one communication abilities, as well as team communication. When picking a tool, take a look at the various integration options. There are tons that you can choose from to streamline operations in your business.
The cost of shifting operations to these technologies might be a concern at first. However, there are great cost-effective solutions in most cases. The ROI of these migrations will soon be apparent in your business.