3 Ways Technology Can Fuel Your Business Growth

by Ashley Wilson, Guest Contributor

Today’s business climate is constantly changing, and the demands on your company may seem to increase regularly. If you are dedicated to helping your company thrive and even grow in the current business environment, you must maximize the use of technology.

Technology In Business = Growth

By leveraging different technological solutions and applications, you may be able to bolster efficiency and even ignite growth. Here are several steps that you can take to maximize the use of technology in your business.

Making Sense of Data
Your company’s access to vital data may be increasing exponentially, but your ability to manage, analyze and utilize this incredible amount of data may be limited. Through information overload, your team's efficiency and focus can be challenged. Delays, indecisiveness and even poor planning and strategizing can take their toll on your company.

Through the effective and intelligent use of technology, you and your team can more easily manage and analyze the data that you collect. By doing so, you can eliminate the negative aspects associated with information overload and maximize the benefits of data. The right data management and analytical tools can be used to expertly sift through the data and help you to efficiently create actionable insights that are relevant to your business operations.

Analyzing big data can yield insight about your competitors’ strong and weak points. It can quickly detect emerging trends so that you can stay on top of your game. You can efficiently monitor social networks, customer reactions and more so that you are fully aware of everything that may impact your business.

Enhancing Customer Experience
Inspired use of technology can also promote the entire customer experience from start to finish. In order to effectively communicate with your leads and customers in both direct and indirect ways, you must harness the power of technology effectively. Through the right software program, you can boost your customer retention rate, reduce operating costs and even foster faster growth while maximizing profitability.

An effective tool can help you improve the overall customer experience by delivering more personalized experiences to your customers. In fact, emails with personalized subject lines get opened more frequently than those that aren’t. In addition, the right tool will help you adjust all of your interactions across varied customer service channels by centralizing customer data in one place.

Improving Collaboration
The modern technology has improved the way data files are stored, protected and shared. The cloud, especially, is increasingly being used in a wide range of business environments, and its use has become so commonplace that it is now almost a norm.

Storing your data in the cloud improves the efforts of a mobile or remote workforce, bolsters efficiency and facilitates effective communication. Even workers or teams who are not physically in the same office can flawlessly work together.

The impact that this has on improving collaboration among team members who are geographically isolated can be incredible. Tools such as Salesforce and Office 365, take full advantage of the cloud by allowing teams to share and access files securely from anywhere in the world. In addition to saving time and money through efficiency, cloud-based technology can reduce overhead, improve productivity and even safeguard data.

Think Twice Before Looking for Quick-Fix Solutions
As amazing as modern technology can be for businesses, you should avoid making hasty technological decisions. Technology has the means to bolster your business activities in incredible ways, but you must spend time understanding your team’s needs and determining which technological solution is a best-fit for your company. When you fail to take this step, you can actually experience detrimental results in some cases.

After you have analyzed and outlined your company’s current challenges, you need to understand the features of specific applications and tools. Learn how these features will affect your business activities, and determine how they could foster growth or efficiency. You must resist the urge to find a quick-fix solution that will simply place a small bandage over the problem.

Conclusion
Technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Even if you searched for a solution to a problem a year or two ago without luck, you may be able to find multiple solutions today. Before moving forward with the implementation of new technology in your business, you need to understand how it works and how it may impact your business. In addition, keep in mind that as amazing as modern technology is, it is not always the right solution to every challenge that your business may run into.
However, when you invest in the right technology for your team to use, you can enjoy incredible results. ​