Implementing technology to support your business strategy

Digital transformation is absolutely critical for business right now, without wanting to sound dramatic, it is probably the most significant opportunity of recent times. If you don't implement a level of digital transformation you will ultimately be left behind by competitors who do. It may seem a little sensationalist but the reality is in today’s market, for a business to be highly competitive and continue to grow, they need to be innovative and flexible and embrace what technology can offer their industries. The problem is that it’s hard to know exactly what technology to invest in, what will actually improve your business, make customers and staff happy, or what is just shiny technology that looks good but offers little tangible or strategic benefit. This can be tricky to understand where the true benefit is, and so this is where a trusted company that can lead you through that journey can really help.

To give a high-level insight into the initial process you might go through we're going to highlight some key areas that we like to explore with our customers when helping them embrace technology.

Agility

The ability to flex your business, and adapt to challenges and new situations can be empowered by the use of technology alongside your own existing management processes.

Quick and effective responses to market changes, trends, and emerging opportunities, can support your business success by giving you a competitive advantage. The ability to be agile through the use of technology also allows you to overcome adverse conditions in the market, for example during 2020 using technology such as collaboration and mobile working solutions like Microsoft Teams and Zoom enabled much of the workforce to work flexibly and business to continue functioning despite a pandemic. Those companies that weren't able to be agile struggled and may not have survived at all. Ongoing use of collaborative tools like those gained in 2020 often results in a more engaged, more collaborative, and happier team, and those elements all lead to increased revenue and profits.

In a slightly different way, technology can also be leveraged to effectively obtain and analyse data about a vast array of elements of your business and that in turn can help you make strategic decisions and change for your organisation’s benefit. So in this sense technology can support an agile mindset to business, if management is prepared to be agile and be led by data then technology can guide and inform that agility to lead the company in new or more profitable directions.

People Focus

Happy staff are engaged staff and engaged staff are much better for business. When staff are happy and enjoying their jobs, they are happy to go the extra mile and want to make customers happy. This ultimately results in better served and happier customers and thus more sales, and more revenue for the business.

Technology can be a game-changer in turning the otherwise adequate staff into truly engaged and invested members of a team that are driving company revenue and profits. From forward-looking ideas such as new systems and software to simply improving and streamlining existing technology improvements can remove barriers and improve morale in the business. Even a simple thing like having payslips and holiday requests automated online can make a big difference.

Change can be a scary occurrence in business so ensuring a smooth, managed and well-communicated transition is often critical to the success of that process.

Integrations

Integrating existing or new technology can unlock huge potential in your existing processes. It can reduce time spent on processes, and reduce errors where data is manually moved but most importantly is the potential to create new opportunities with the linked data in the existing systems.

Where systems can be integrated, such as data input such as an order, and automatically linking that into an order fulfilment or manufacturing stage, that is one less process that can go wrong or bottleneck. By linking systems as well it can expose data and intelligence that might not have been noticed, perhaps certain types of orders on certain days or when certain teams are working work particularly well whilst other back up, that intelligence might not be apparent when orders are just bits of paper being handed around.

Automation and Scaleability

Technology can optimise processes and streamline your workforce, it isn't about replacing people with automation, it's about using people where they are most valuable and letting technology handle the mundane that can be easily automated.

Investing in automation software can reduce the time taken by organisations to process day-to-day work, resolve issues and improve their customer service. This also results in a better ability to cope with a sudden peak in demand, ultimately improving the bottom line. For example, we utilise a tool which proactively monitors key metrics and services used to keep computers running at their best, if this finds something amiss with a device it can automatically resolve that issue in around 90% of cases, resulting in less disruption and downtime, so your operations are efficient at all times.

Digital Transformation = Success & Viability

The correct digital transformation strategy is critical to a company's long-term viability. Having a good IT strategy to guide your business,  technology processes, software, hardware, and infrastructure decisions can help you understand and master all aspects of IT, allowing you to make smart, educated business decisions that will help your business grow.

Your organisation will be able to harness good technology practices for optimum growth and productivity by proactively selecting the correct technology systems and partners and that is where Freethought Services come in. We look to partner with businesses to deliver the right technical solutions but also advise about the best way to proceed. We have successfully helped multiple businesses adapt and become a magnitude more productive and efficient. Why not reach out for a chat? Give us a call on 03300 882131 or email hello@freethought.services

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