The world of business technology is changing rapidly due to an incredible amount of innovation. Being able to harness this new technology can help businesses rocket into a new age and make everyday processes faster and easier. This article will outline five technologies we believe every growing business needs to boost their success and productivity.
- Cloud Computing Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services – servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, intelligence and moreover the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources and economies of scale. One of the significant benefits of cloud computing is its cost-effectiveness and scalability. “A recent study from Rackspace surveyed 1,300 companies and found that 88% of cloud users experienced cost savings, and 56% noted an increase in profits.” The cloud is great because it can grow with your business, and you can implement changes in the system quickly and effectively. It also allows you to have a hands-off approach with your server, meaning that the management and security can be taken care of by your vendor. When it comes to security, thanks to companies such as AWS, cloud computing is now protected by technology that is as strong as anything that a local server can achieve. Security is also scalable, so you only pay for the level of protection you need. For more information on the differences between cloud and local hosting, read our blog here.
- Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM) Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a software solution that brings a host of capabilities together. You can store all your prospects and customers, make calls, send emails, create reports, schedule appointments, add notes, manage your pipeline, and find out who’s opened your latest email—without stepping out of the CRM system. This software allows teams throughout your organisation to save time by making processes simple and information quick and easy to find. Your customers love it too because they will get contacted quickly with the information they need. CRM also allows you to set up automated workflows, which can be set up to send a pre-written response to enquiries. For example, if a customer emails your business looking for a particular product, let’s say a chair, you can set up a response that addresses them by their name and supplies them with all the details of every chair you have in stock. This automation can assist the customer on their buying journey without anyone in your organisation lifting a finger.
- Data Security As the workplace continues to turn digital, data security software is becoming more and more critical. If you are a growing business, protecting your assets becomes paramount to company success. Data security has many arms, including cloud access security, data encryption, payment security and email and mobile app security. Investing in strong security should be one of your first concerns if you are looking to go digital. Luckily there are many solutions out there which can scale for the needs of a small and large business. If you decide to host your server in the cloud, talk to your vendor about which security would best suit you. Finding the right hosting partner can make digital migration almost seamless for your business.
- Learning Management System (LMS)
The essential tool for almost all online learning deployments, Learning Management Systems (LMS) has a wide variety of uses and benefits. If you’re a training organisation or a company looking to cut down staff training costs, online learning is the future. LMS provides organisations with a practical and easy way to provide training to a large number of learners. It allows you to place all your training modules in the one location, cutting down on administration costs and reducing the risk of losing valuable information. The system also tracks learner progress and performance and can provide you with reports with customisable highly detailed reports.
* Learnbook LMS is a great example of a user-friendly platform for both learners and administrators.
The most excellent feature of the LMS is its ability to reduce Learning Development time and costs. Organisations can stay up-to-date with compliance regulations quickly, at a small portion of the cost of face to face training. Online learning through an LMS is also able to be more engaging, with the deployment of Gamification and social learning features. - Artificial Intelligence Organisations are expected to receive 10 to 1,000 times more data in the next year, and with that data has come Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a way to analyse and see trends faster and more effectively than any human team could. Now, you may not be a large organisation with an insurmountable amount of data to investigate, but the good news is that with the innovation in data reading has come AI functionality for the everyday workplace. AI is being used to make workplaces more efficient, with products like AISense (a feature of Zoom) being able to transcribe meetings and publish them as searchable text automatically. AI systems like Spoke, are also able to chat to customers online, and either answer their question with a response you have predetermined or forward them onto the correct department, cutting down administration time and cost considerably. AI can be used to improve many things in the workplace, but the one thing it affects the most is productivity. The less you have to do menial tasks such as building reports in spreadsheets, look for open meeting times or answer the same questions over and over, the more productive you are going to be. AI helps to eliminate these redundant tasks and allows workers to spend more time being creative and solving problems.
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