It’s impossible to remember what running a business without computers and access to the internet looked like. Digitization has entered not just our work lives but our everyday lives as well, and if you don’t accept it, you’re going to be left behind.
You can’t deny that technology is here to stay and 90% of jobs are seen to require digital skills in the future. So if you want your company not only to be profitable but stay in business without being pushed aside by more modern competitors, it’s time to digitize your business processes.
How to Digitize
First of all, we need to talk about all of the processes you need to go through so your business is digitized.
Do your Research
Before you incorporate a variety of tools and software into your daily operations, you need to know what kind of technology your business needs.
The first step is to look at all of your daily processes and see how they interlink with one another. Once you do that, establish a set of protocols and the type of tools that will help improve these processes, increase productivity, and improve customer experience.
After that, create objectives you want to achieve and define them in a way that will make them memorable for both your employees and customers.
Think About User Experience
The main goal in digitization is to provide your customers with an even better user experience than they had before and improve your company’s image. To ensure that, you need to gather the perfect team that will be in charge of the digitization.
Additionally, you need to make sure your customers are comfortable with the process and will actually want to use the technology you’re planning to incorporate.
Incorporate Cloud-Based Technology
It’s almost impossible to find a digitized business that doesn’t use at least a couple of cloud-based technologies. The average employee uses more than 30 cloud-based services daily, for a good reason. Cloud computing is cost-effective, it’s highly secure, and it doesn’t require an IT infrastructure.
There are many useful cloud technologies, one of which is PowerApps. This is a service that allows you to develop and use custom business apps that link to your data and work across the web and mobile devices – without the time and cost of developing custom software.
However, this service isn’t easy to use. If you want to take advantage of all of the benefits it has to offer and if you’re based in New York, for example, you can hire a PowerApps consultant in NYC. Your consultant will be able to create a solution that is tailor-made for your business needs.
Areas to Digitize
The areas you choose to digitize will depend on your business needs, but no matter what niche you’re in, these areas are necessary.
Expense Reporting
Taking care of expense report claims (e.g. for business travel) is a long process that is also prone to human error, and something every business needs to deal with. Also, it’s highly repetitive and anyone who ever had to deal with it knows it’s a struggle to keep up with it.
That is why every business needs an expense report software that will automate reporting, streamline employee expense reimbursements, and much more, quickly and without any mistakes.
Customer Service
A CRM, or customer relationship management software, is essential for any business that is looking to improve its customer service. This software helps you build strong relationships with customers, find prospects easily, and store and manage all customer information.
When you use a CRM, every time a customer contacts your business, you will have immediate access to all of their information and the history they have with your business.
This software can also be used by the sales and marketing teams so it stores all the necessary info that will help you keep the customer satisfied and sell them as many products as possible.
Analytics and Tracking
When you have a CRM, you can do much more than improve your customer service. One of the most useful features of this tool is data collecting, and if you know anything about data, you know how important it is.
Your team can use the data derived from your CRM tool to create powerful analytics and see the performance of your businesses clearly. You will be able to tell which areas are underperforming, which advertising channels are the most efficient, the sales team’s activities, and much more.
Accounting and Billing
One of the most important departments in any organization is accounting. Seeing as how the employees there deal with all of the business’s finances, it would be smart to digitize as much of their workload as possible.
When you use accounting software, you can automate most of the menial processing operations such as customer invoicing, tracking bills, and managing expenses. You’ll also be able to monitor sales more easily and never worry about human error again.
Final thoughts
Whether or not you like it, the future is already here, and digitization has come with it. While some business owners delay digitization or even avoid it as much as possible, this isn’t smart as it will bring more and more issues as time goes on and most businesses become digitized.
So, do the smart thing and invest in digitization right now.
