There’s always an element of risk in starting a business, so if your business is doing well then you’re obviously on top of most things. But as demand grows and your business expands, you have to change the way you look at your business, and this can be harder than it sounds. In most businesses, investing in technology becomes increasingly important. Today we’ll look at some of the changes and tech solutions that growing businesses will benefit from.
One of the things that can make the difference between a thriving business and a struggling one is whether the people in charge can adapt to the challenges and changes that come with a growing business. Problems can come at you from every angle. Investing in technology can be vital in solving those problems. Here are some tools to consider.
Cloud-based, Hosted VoIP
If you’re thinking of investing in technology as your business grows, then Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a good place to start. It’s more than just a telephony solution. It’s a financial win-win too. With VoIP you can redirect money towards the more important goal of taking your business forward. A VoIP system is a cost-effective solution that delivers enterprise-level call, text and conferencing services. A cloud-based VoIP system that’s professionally managed can resolve a whole bunch of communications problems.
Costs: The most obvious benefit is reducing costs by cutting out reliance on telephone companies, but it goes further…
Flexibility: It’s easy to add or remove lines with a VoIP system – new phones can be added in a matter of minutes. This makes it easy to upscale as your business grows.
Features: VoIP offers all the options and features that traditional phone systems have, and includes a suite of communications tools that can be incorporated to work with your existing operational systems.
Mobile working: With VoIP systems you’ll usually have options that can turn any smartphone into a VoIP phone, with a host of benefits for mobile working.
Top-of-the-range hardware: With hosted VoIP systems, your system will run on top-level hardware systems, ensuring that it’s reliable and efficient.
Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, software is an end-to-end solution that helps businesses liaise with existing or prospective clients. At the business end it helps streamline operations, while enhancing the support offered to customers. These are some of the tools CRM includes – and this list only covers the main features:
- • Contact management
- • Account management
- • Business analytics
- • Quote and purchase management
- • Procurement/Vendor management
- • Workflow automation
- • Sales process automation
- • Service automation
- • Lead management
- • Relationship tracking
- • Campaign management
Are these options something that you really need? The thing is this: as a business expands, the tasks and volume of work increase, but the time available stays the same. Even with effective delegation and supervision of your sales, production, marketing and customer service teams, bigger businesses have more work to do. A variety of those tasks can be dealt with by using automation. Many businesses rely increasingly on automation as they grow. A CRM solution can manage departmental interoperability, facilitating collaboration and efficiency and supporting both your staff and your customers.
It’s easy to integrate CRM tools with your supply chain management, service delivery and payroll software and other features of your existing business technology to support your organization’s operations end-to-end.
Your Web Presence
These days it’s really important to have a significant online presence. Brand awareness has never been more important for businesses. Consumers rate it very highly, along with convenience, as one of the most significant factors when they are making decisions about purchasing a service or product. It’s no longer sufficient just to have a web site or to use traditional marketing strategies directed at local clients. Web marketing is where it’s at, and that requires investment of time and effort.
One way that businesses are reaching out to potential clients is via social media, which extends their reach to a customer base and goes beyond conventional advertising and marketing methods. Ways to use social media include blogs and other content sharing, interacting directly with users who have questions or problems and spreading awareness of the great work you do by publishing case studies and testimonials. These are effective ways to engage an audience. To increase your web traffic, and your sales opportunities, link your webpage to your social media accounts.
Do you have a growing business? Keep ahead of it by recognizing that investing in technology is the way to keep moving forward. To talk to one of our IT professionals about the technology that can assist your business as it expands, give us a call today at (973) 882-4644.