You can’t get away from technology if you want to start a business today. If you insist on doing things the old way, you’ll always get left behind by people who adapt to the tools that make things easier.
Technology in business hit an all-time high in 2019. Reports show that spending reached a record of $3.36 billion during the year.
You need to make use of modern-day technology if you want to keep up in business today. Below are seven of the smartest ways to make use of today’s tech to make your company more productive.
1. Virtual Meetings
Business today happens everywhere in the world. More people than ever are working from their homes. Unfortunately, this causes problems if you need to run meetings.
Virtual conferencing software solves this problem by allowing your employees to join a video meeting. You send a link to everyone in the conference. Once they click the link, they enter a call that has everyone involved.
It doesn’t stop with internal meetings, either. You’ll spend a lot of money if you want to have a face-to-face with your customers. Virtual meetings allow you to hold client meetings, no matter where everyone is located in the world.
2. Project Management
You’ll never run a successful project without a system in place to manage things. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to make use of online technology to help keep things straight.
Online project management software gives you and your team a place online to organize your projects. You can set up as many projects there as you wish. Once you set your projects up, invite the people who will work on those projects as collaborators, and they’ll be able to access their project information.
Project management software also gives you a way to assign roles and tasks to your employees. Nobody will ever need to dig through long email chains to figure out what to do. All they need to do is log into their project portal and look at their task list.
3. Document Collaboration
It’s hard to collaborate when you don’t have a central location to store all your vital business documents. Sure, you can set up a file server. The problem is that people can’t edit documents at the same time, and you’re stuck at the office if you want to view a file.
You can move your documents online using online document collaboration tools. This software gives your employees a way to see company documents, no matter where they are located.
Online documents also have shared editing capabilities. You can have several people viewing a document at the same time. Each person will be able to see all the changes made in real-time.
Document collaboration software also has a version history. If someone makes incorrect changes, you don’t have much to worry about. All you need to do is roll back to an older version of the file.
4. Online Invoicing
If you aren’t making use of technology to send invoices, you’re going to rely on mailed paper checks and slow wire transfers. Why go through all that trouble when your clients can log into an invoice online and pay directly from their bank account?
An online invoicing system will make client payments a breeze. Set up your bank account information, and your clients will be able to make payments with a few clicks of a button. You only need to wait for a few days for your ACH transfer to go through.
Online invoicing programs also give clients a way to pay with credit cards and PayPal. These alternative payment methods give people a way to pay that might have problems otherwise.
5. Accounting
Spreadsheets are great for a lot of things. The problem is, they rely on manual data entry. When you’re dealing with something like business finances, you can’t afford to make a mistake.
Accounting software helps by automating much of the manual work away. Instead of entering all your transactions manually, accounting software logs in to your bank account and downloads everything for you. Once it has this data, it categorizes your transactions for you.
Data entry automation isn’t the only benefit you’ll see with accounting programs. Most packages also include pre-built reports that give you insight into your finances. You can get a high-level overview of everything happening with your company.
6. Email List
It isn’t easy to keep in touch with your customers when you have a lot of them. You’ll spend your whole day sending individual emails to every one of them.
An email list solves this problem. Instead of sending individual emails, you create a list of contacts, add some personal information to contact fields, and send all your emails at once.
You replace personal information with tags to customize your emails. This technology will save you hours of manual work every day if you still send email updates regularly to all your customers.
7.VOIP Phones
If you have employees that do business at home or on the road, you probably don’t want them to use their personal phone numbers to conduct business. A VOIP phone system will make it so they don’t have to.
Your employees will still use their personal phones to make calls. But, when you setup a VoIP phone, the phone call will look like it comes from an office number.
Think of a VOIP device as a bridge to the office. Your employee’s phone will connect to your phone system using the internet and call your clients from an office number.
Make Use of Modern-Day Technology Everywhere You Can
There’s no reason for you not to take advantage of the tools available to your business today. Modern-day technology will help you make your company more productive and profitable. Start investing today so you can see the results immediately.
Of course, there are more tools out there that will help your business thrive. Keep reading our blog to find out what they are.
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