The Best Tech to Run Your Business

by | Blog, Contributed Post

For a business to be successful, behind the scenes companies have many systems and technologies in place that help it run efficiently. We live in a world today full of great technology, most of which are designed to improve efficiency and productivity. So, the question is how can and what tech is best, to help run your business.

Using the Right Website Client

One of the most important parts of a business is its brand. Branding is the main driving force for whether someone will use your company, or go to your competitor. Add the fact that we live in a more and more connected world with the internet, more people are wanting to find a website to help them find out what your business does. So, the choice of which website client you should use is an important choice to make, so make sure you research exactly what you need. Squarespace helps manage email campaigns, appointments, and the website, so this could be a good choice. Other clients like WordPress and Wix have different customizing tools that may fit your business better than others. So make sure you research the features, the prices, and the plans that these clients offer, so you get the right one for your company.

Mobile App Development

Something that has been growing in popularity is custom mobile apps for within the business. This is for bigger companies, as smaller companies and start-ups wouldn’t require such customization at such a young age (In a business development sense). But having a good mobile development and technology team within your business can really benefit you in being able to build a good quality and efficient app for your business. If you are a digital company, then a development team would be great if you were to build a mobile app of some kind. 

Data Management

If you are running a company that harvests data, like forms on a website or analytics from mobile apps and websites, then a good data management system is needed. Managing data is needed to first be more efficient as a company, as data is valuable and sometimes sensitive. Platforms such as ebecs (www.ebecs.com) and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are just a few of the many platforms out there that can manage your data flow and sort it for you.

Invoices and Paperwork

Do you send invoices? If so then a good system to send invoices is very useful! Platforms such as Square and more offer the ability to create products or services and then compile an invoice for you. The platform will then send the invoice and you can even manage reminders and repeat invoices, which makes your job managing these documents and invoices much easier!

Manage your Workflow

Last but not least, all of these products and services help improve your overall workflow. When a business is growing more and more it can be easy to start being buried in work and stress as the business grows. So that is why is important to take note of these technologies and services, and use them so you can take a lot of that stress away and run your business smoothly!

Image Source, Pexels

This is a contributed post

3 Important Ways Your Business Should Be Using Data

by | Blog, Contributed Post

***Contributors Post***

Modern businesses collect a huge amount of data about themselves and their customers. Whenever you have an interaction with a customer, regardless of the nature of that interaction, you’re storing some kind of data. You also have a wealth of data about your own business operations to draw on. But this data revolution has happened so fast that a lot of businesses don’t know how to effectively make use of it, which is a big problem. If you know how to utilize all of that data properly, it can bring about massive improvements to your business. If you haven’t put much thought into it before now, these are some of the most important ways that your business should be using that data.

Master Data 

One of the reasons that businesses struggle to manage and use the data that they hold is because there is simply so much of it and it’s spread all over the place. Most businesses have a lot of different software applications that they use. You’ll have one program that manages your marketing, one that manages sales, a different one for your accounts, and then you’ve got loads of emails and social media interactions as well. When your data is split between lots of different applications, it can be hard to use it to answer simple questions like, ‘which customers responded best to our recent marketing campaign.’ But if you can bring all of that data together, it’s a lot easier to use, that’s where master data comes in. A good master data management can bring information from all of those different applications together under some simple headings. For example, you can view all data that relates to your customers as a whole, which makes it easier to base decisions on it. It streamlines the process so you can start using that data to make improvements to the business. 

Targeted Marketing 

When you’re developing a marketing campaign, it’s important that you target it toward the right people. Data is such a big help here because it gives you such a good insight into your customer’s mindset. You can look at your previous campaigns and which aspects connected well with customers. When you’re trying to decide which digital marketing tools to use, knowing which of them offer a good return on investment and which don’t helps you to allocate resources effectively and reduces waste. 

Developing New Products 

The first step in developing a new product is identifying a gap that needs to be filled. You need a problem that you can create a solution for, and customer data can really help here. If you can see what kind of products your customers are buying from you and see where the gaps are, you can start developing new product lines to fill those gaps. You can look at social media posts and reviews of your products to see whether there are features or capabilities that people are asking for. You can also see which products aren’t connecting so well so you know what to avoid. Incorporating that data into your product design process will help you to create something that is more likely to resonate with customers. 

Data is one of the best tools that you have at your disposal so it’s important that you make sure that you’re taking full advantage of it.   Â