Making the change to a more digitally based system can be intimidating, especially for medium and small businesses. Further adding to the debate about whether you switch or not are questions regarding what technology can really do to enhance your business processes.
Businesses of any size can implement technology solutions to make day to day business better, and here’s your guide to how.
Using Technology to Streamline Your Business Processes
Make business easier on the go
Using smart technology can make it easier for businesses that don’t strictly stay in the office. For example, companies that provide estimates, contractor work, or even HVAC companies can use software to make completing out calls easier. Some businesses may choose to supply company smart devices, while others choose to invest more heavily in software, or a hybrid method for both.
Using technology like this allows employees to receive updated customer information, access to resources, log job information, or even fill work orders or do invoicing.
Help employees and contractors work efficiently
Technology can be highly impactful for the work your employees or contractors need to complete every day. With the addition of the right technology into the workplace you can increase your daily productivity, leading to more accomplishments annually.
Employees gain faster access to programs they use in their everyday duties, allowing your business to cut down on ‘dead time’ that is otherwise wasted on waiting for programs and data to load, or navigating user unfriendly technology. Workers can get information quickly about their assigned project, and can more easily coordinate with other team or department members. Similarly, your business will cut down on inefficient processes that frustrate employees and ultimately waste time without providing any added accuracy. Technology can be used to streamline the clock in/out and break processes, as well as allow employees to self track their work hours or payroll.
Keep track of company finances
It’s common enough for businesses to use some kind of technology solution to take care of company finance matters. In fact, it’s more common than not to use several different softwares to take care of all the individual facets of company money. Many times there’s a program for payroll, for customer payments, company expenses, and so on. This can make things complicated, especially because the software often isn’t compatible.
Using an integrated solution, your business can group all financial management tasks together, or create a solution that facilitates communication between accounting departments. This not only increases the accuracy of your financial reports, but also frees up valuable work hours that otherwise would have been spent manually on the process.
Communicate more effectively
One of the best assets a business can have is excellent communication, and technology can make your communications processes more effective, and easier to implement. There are plenty of strategies to use, including company email software that streamlines announcements, technology that allows for group meetings to take place remotely, and even technology that allows coworkers to simultaneously edit and contribute to group projects.
By using technology as a tool to enhance company wide communication, you enable relationships between departments and individual workers which increases daily productivity. Likewise, you never have to worry about a group of employees missing an important policy change or announcement because of a missing paper or late arrival.
Create a better data storage solution
Technology allows for a very dynamic treatment of data, but security remains a top concern. More and more companies are leveraging technology to improve not only how they store data, but also how they keep it secure. In fact, many businesses turn to technology for an upgrade to their data storage as one of their initial steps in integrating technology into their daily business practices.
When you use technology to create a better digital storage system, you can actually speed up existing programs in your system. Not only that, you can give your company extra security in case of data that goes missing as a result of human error, or another circumstance. Data can quickly be retrieved and restored minimizing interruption to your regular business.
Add value for your customer base
It’s especially important for businesses with clients that require ongoing work to keep track of timelines and project goals. Technology in your workplace can allow you to create detailed plans and specifications for every facet of the job that needs to be completed, which allows your business to seamlessly complete jobs to your customer’s satisfaction with minimal hassle.
Technology can be especially helpful in communicating project specifics with clients, in addition to other team members. Your business can send clients copies of detailed project outlines, get feedback instantly, and make any necessary changes in real time. This allows for both your team and your client to receive the most current information without the delay of phone tag or internal memos.
Conclusion
Technology can be used by businesses to their great advantage, especially when it’s started at the ground level of day to day business processes. There is no doubt that making the transition can lead to some large benefits over time, but it’s important for businesses to recognize the necessity of streamlining processes within the company in a cohesive way, that enhances all facets of operation.
Marie Erhart is a Success Manager at FieldPulse, creators of field service software that lets you run your entire contracting business from a single app. She works with contractors to help them grow their business using best practices.
