Get the Operational Freedom You Seek Through Automation

We’re always talking about boosting productivity and the role your technology has in that quest. What we don’t always talk about is how boosting innovation can help free up your employees to produce better results. It’s the same technology, and it can have multiple benefits. In this week’s blog, we’ll discuss how focusing on how these two thoughts can be one and the same.

Managing a staff today is harder than ever. Not only do employees have more say over where they work and what they do than ever before, they also can do more work from more places today and expect their employer to understand this fact. This has led to some pretty tense moments over the past year as the world tries to find some semblance of “normal” after the COVID-19 pandemic changed business. 

Productivity the Metric, Starts with Productivity the Action

Productivity has long been the measure used to define workers, departments, businesses, and industry as a whole. The more productive people are the better everything is, at least that is what we are all told. There is some truth in this. Don’t you feel better when you get more done? Doesn’t sustained productivity make you “good” at something? 

When individuals inside your organization are more productive, it stands to reason that your whole organization will be more productive. Technology has been a large facilitator in increased productivity, of course, and it can help in many ways.

First, getting the right tools for the jobs that need to get done is a priority consideration. This starts on the administrative side of your business. Standardizing management tools can not only go a long way toward getting a more efficient business, it can do wonders for your organization’s productivity. One tool, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) can bring a great deal of automation to your operations, your sales and marketing, and your overall relationship with your customers (it’s in the name).  The CRM works to automate a lot of the communication, time tracking, and customer interaction that you will have, making collaboration easier to muster and successful customer experiences much more likely. 

The less time your employees spend on the management of these relationships, the more they can focus on doing more revenue-generating activities; in essence, boosting productivity. In fact, the CRM, while probably the best tool a business can use to automate a lot of the back-and-forth that can bog down their workdays, is just one of many tools that are pushing business productivity forward. Today, there are productivity suites (again, in the name) that are cloud-based platforms that provide workers with the tools they need to be productive and the capabilities needed to collaborate in real time, 

Speaking of the cloud, many businesses—especially those that moved their operations offsite due to the pandemic—are now using cloud-based resources more than ever. Not only do cloud tools allow for anytime, anywhere access, they also allow businesses to cut their upfront capital computing costs (since they don’t have to buy the server and software licenses) and their maintenance costs (since the provider handles those). All-in-all the cloud is a great technology for smaller businesses that want to compete with enterprise businesses that have been leveraging the technology for over a decade.

Free Up Your Operations with Technology

Businesses are finding it difficult to innovate. With margins striking because of rising costs, smaller businesses need to get the most out of their staff. The best way to do this is through the use of technology. We established how businesses are able to use automated tools to be more productive, but it can also have a massive benefit on the quality of your offering. 

Consider how much time and effort your staff has to put into just adhering to the strict guidelines imposed on them on a day-to-day basis. Now consider if they were less inundated with minutiae and procedure and were able to communicate with a click of a button, manage their schedules and their client responsibilities in minutes and do all of that with more effectiveness. This seems like a win-win situation for your business, right? Here are three innovations to your business’ technology that you can use to free up your people:

• AI Chat Bot - Supporting your products is essential but it is short on revenue generation. For the small business where employees tend to wear a lot of hats, support can really cut into their ability to focus on their productivity tasks. Businesses of all sizes are starting to use tools featuring some type of artificial intelligence. One of these can take a giant load off of your employees’ shoulders. With AI technology powering an Internet-based support platform, your product and service support can continue to improve and provide the value your customers need, while also eliminating a lot of the time and effort expended by your employees.
• Internet of Things - Utility bills keep climbing and if they are handled manually there is a significant risk for you to spend more than you budget for. With IoT technology powering your HVAC systems, lighting, and more, you can significantly cut your utility costs and do it in an extremely affordable manner. Besides that, IoT can be leveraged in many other ways including inventory management and asset tracking, two parts of your business that are traditionally handled by employees. 
• Data Insights - One of the biggest challenges for a business is to correlate data in a way where you can get definitive answers to the issues you face. With today’s business analytics and business intelligence platforms, a company can use data in ways that would be literally impossible through traditional means. Your data can give you the answers to solve a lot of operational problems and through big data initiatives, your business can get smarter fast. 

At Preferred, we pride ourselves on helping Chicagoland businesses become the most profitable organizations they can be through the integration of technology and best practices. If you would like to learn more about how to utilize automation and more innovative technologies to cut costs, be more efficient, and improve your bottom line, give us a call today at 708-781-7110.