5 Ways to Use Digital Technology to Grow Your Business

While the world has gone hi-tech all around us, many small businesses don’t yet really understand the benefits of investing in digital technology, and how it can have a major impact on growth. Of course, the object of going digital is to speed things up and reduce redundancy in effort, but there is so much more to transitioning to a digital environment than at first meets the eye.

Yes, it’s easier to email (with attachments) a client than it is to drop off paperwork or to send a communique via snail mail, but that is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to productivity. Since everyone knows the key to business growth is productivity, here are just five of the ways in which to use digital technology to grow your business by improving productivity within your company.

1) Effective Use of Manpower Hours

There was a time when bosses had to schedule staff meetings for everything from introducing new products to training and everything in between. Now, with digital technology, it is only a matter of a live videocast in which no one needs to leave their desks, but with the exact same format as a meeting in a conference room. The major benefit here isn’t that time isn’t lost wandering about the building from point A to point B but rather a recorded session, which can be referred back to at any given moment if a question should arise.

In fact, the savings to a company can be immense because even workers not scheduled to be in the building can attend as long as they have Internet access. They can be paid for their time, but they needn’t get out of their loungewear, be paid travel time, or hours on the clock. The only cost to a business would be per hour (if an employee is hourly of course) for the length of the videocast. A room isn’t taken up for the meeting so that overhead is reduced as well. In all, it’s a total win-win situation due to digital technology.

2) Interdepartmental Organization

Speaking of being present no matter where you are physically located, we can thank the Cloud for increased interdepartmental organization. Now with Cloud based software, businesses can organize everything in the Cloud which can be accessed no matter where a staff member is located. It’s all about granting access permissions so that each employee can log on, look at their scheduled tasks, keep notes on where they stand in their own personal bit of production and share with team members in real time.

Each department has levels of access so that they can do everything from keeping track of hours for payroll to requesting vacation / leave time off to updating projects they are working on so the next person can pick up where they left off. It may seem overly simplistic, but with technology like modular voice transcription software, you can add components as you go, but the core dictation component can allow you to quickly dictate jobs from wherever you are, hit send and the office staff will be on it within moments.

Actually, at a later time you can get state-of-the-art speech-to-text components and the software will even transcribe it for you. It’s amazing just how organized you can keep your various departments with software that can be accessed via the Cloud or through mobile (cell tower) communications.

3) Real Time Communications

Speaking of real time communications, small businesses now have access to everything from video chat to video conferencing, texting (SMS or MMS), social networking, email, Internet based fax and the list goes on. Although email and faxing aren’t quite as instantaneous as chat platforms, they are still much more within the realm of ‘real time’ than any previous generation of communications.

From speed dialing from your cell phone to pulling up Facetime on your tablet or iPhone, you can instantly communicate with team members, administration, clients, creditors, debtors and anyone else you need to reach ‘on the spot.’ There’s nothing like digital technology from communicating what you want when you want, and there is no doubt about just how much real time communications can benefit your bottom line.

4) Metrics & Analytics

What used to take analysts and accountants days, if not weeks, to measure business performance and analyze key areas can now be done through digital technology in nanoseconds. There are just so many ways to collect data via computer technology that it would take an entire semester at college to discuss them, but the point being made is that time saved is money earned.

5) Customer Service

And last but never least, customer service is a real plus when it comes to using digital technology. Most platforms have question and answer features which customers can access 24/7 to find solutions to common problems. If a question isn’t listed on your website, for example, they can fill out a brief contact form and within hours a staff member can have an answer waiting for them in their own inbox. Here is another area in which a chat feature is of major benefit. A customer sitting at his or her computer can pose a question to a live rep on the other side of cyberspace, get answers to their questions and go away happy with a quick and relatively pain-free resolution.

It’s simply amazing just how many ways digital technology can help to grow your business that if you haven’t already invested in at least the basic foundation of a modular platform you can build upon, you are really wasting money that could be well spent. Digital technology is the future and that future is here today.