Technology has been helping us overcome our limitations in the broadest sense. Starting from apparent examples such as cars and kitchen appliances, it’s easy to tell that technology helps us in completing tasks faster and more efficiently.
However, there are less obvious ways in which you can use software to improve your life and business. For example, customer relationship management programs have helped many companies improve the satisfaction of their customers. As much as 91% of small and medium businesses are using it.
Of course, CRM is one of many technologies that can help you streamline your business operations. Whether you want to improve your external or internal processes, there’s a plethora of solutions that will help you with that.
Today I will give you straightforward tips that’ll help you smoothen your business processes. Some of them can seem costly, but they’ll certainly pay off in the long run.
1. Improving communication using software
It’s interesting how business communication has advanced throughout the last few decades. It started with a telecopier, and now we have email and real-time messages.
While Covid-19 left terrible consequences for the world economy and destroyed many lives, it brought rapid advancement of remote work and the software that accompanies it.
Up until recently, only people in offices who had to strike million-dollar deals were video conferencing. Today, video conferences are an important aspect of every digital business, but even some companies that have physical offices kept it.
The rise of platforms such as Slack and Zoom allowed teams to collaborate remotely on work-related problems. On top of that, they’ve also noticed the team-building element of video conferences and decided to incorporate it as a way of keeping up with the private lives of other team members.
Forgive me for talking about messaging apps as if I’m a caveman who just discovered fire. Let’s move on to more interesting and important applications that help with business operations.
There’s a plethora of project management and productivity apps that help teams have a transparent insight into their work.
Asana, Trello, and Basecamp are some of the most popular work management apps that allow their users to track their tasks.
These apps usually have features that give access to these processes to whole teams so that everyone can review the performance and effectiveness of each employee.
If you have project management software, you should look into subscribing to cloud-based storage to help your team exchange data more efficiently.
Some people are working together in real-time using software as a service such as Google Docs. While there are many free options, they are often limited in their features and storage.
2. Using a product roadmap tool
In the past, project managers and CEOs had to track the progress of their product development and launch manually. While “manually” doesn’t necessarily mean using pen and paper, it suggests they had to use multiple applications to achieve what a single app can achieve today.
If you choose the right product roadmapping tool, you can certainly make your life easier and improve coordination with your team. These tools assist product managers and other people responsible for the process of product development with team management and with the creation of a product roadmap.
For those that aren’t experienced in this subject, roadmaps are a summary of the goals that need to be achieved during the development.
This is often represented visually. Instead of tracking progress through a sheet, calendar, project management, and communication app, you can only use a roadmapping tool.
A good roadmap is quite helpful when it comes to presenting your product to the stakeholders. If you introduce your product in a straightforward and distinct way, you can expect better investment opportunities.
There are many tools in this category that are pretty easy to use and offer additional tutorials and tech support. Even people that don’t have advanced experience in product development will be able to use these tools.
It’s important to have your customers in mind while you’re in the development stages. However, if you haven’t got around to using product roadmapping tools during the process of development, you can still find a use for them even after your product is published.
3. Choosing effective user provisioning practices
Computer network administrators probably experienced some form of user and account management. However, this is a task that’s been becoming present in the work of HRs and managers.
The process of creating, managing, and deactivating accounts across various systems and departments is called user provisioning.
Learning user provisioning best practices will help your company smoothen the process of communicating and managing data between individuals and teams.
The trick with user provisioning is that people doing it have to consider security and compliance practices in the company. Wrongly assigning permissions to someone can lead to many problems.
The process of user provisioning starts with creating the account and assigning it a suitable username and password. Access privileges are usually assigned depending on the role and importance of the employee.
Doing this process manually has its benefits. You’ll be able to do this more carefully and with additional customization if needed.
However, human error can be present in this method, and it’s generally slower than doing it using the software. Automating this process is especially helpful in companies where there are hundreds or thousands of different employees.
Overall it’s important that user access is adequately managed and organized, as it will improve the efficiency of other business processes as well as reduce the risk of data breaches.
4. Utilizing finance & accounting software
While you’re still going to need someone to manage this software adequately, using it can improve the efficiency of your administration significantly. Accounting software such as QuickBooks, Xero, or Sage helps your staff with invoicing and billing.
Some of these platforms also have additional tools that help with financial reports and taxation. This way of managing your finances isn’t only more efficient but also eco-friendly, as you won’t have to purchase paper that you’ll just end up in someone’s garbage after the end of the day.
Invoicing isn’t the only financial aspect that needs to be taken care of. Companies often juggle various expenses and incomes, and this has to be regulated. Planning your budget and forecasting potential losses can help you avoid bankruptcy and deal with bad situations more efficiently.
Also, it’s worth mentioning how easy it is for people to create their online stores using various plugins and platforms. Almost anyone can add payment processors to their website and allow their users to make purchases of digital or physical software.
5. Using AI as a personal assistant
People in the 20th century imagined that they were going to have robots like C-3PO serving them around the house. While we still don’t have humanoid robots that bring us coffee, it’s amazing how AI personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa can help you with your everyday tasks.
Whether you’re a student or a CEO, you can leave your scheduling duties to your AI assistant. They’ll help you with this by setting reminders and sending notifications when the date gets closer.
In the world of notifications and spam messages, you need to filter out what’s not important. For example, Alexa has exclusive filtering which will allow you to block out emails sent from a specific address. On the other hand, you can feel free to ask her to read it out loud to you, delete it or archive it.
Time management and notifications are quite important if you’re a manager that has multiple meetings during the day. Missing out on an important meeting can deal a significant blow to the company’s reputation, and AI personal assistants can help you prevent that.
Implementing streamlines your business operations
Technology that can be utilized for improving various aspects of your business has quite advanced. Besides that, there’s a plethora of software that each employee can utilize personally to be more effective. There’s Grammarly for improving their writing and ChatGPT that helps with learning and content creation.
On the other hand, the software can never make up for untrained employees or poor products. Choose your staff carefully, and make sure that you onboard and train them properly for the software they are going to use.
Many companies have observed that AI tools such as ChatGPT lead to an increase in laziness in their workers. This is another downside of utilizing such software. Using automation software as an assistant is fantastic, but using it to avoid work is the complete opposite of that.
