Business automation has been one of the things that made it possible for companies to survive the pandemic, and if you are not yet practicing this, you are missing out on a lot of benefits.
When you are running a business, it is important that your team maximizes each hour and functions in the most efficient way possible. With modern technology infused into your operations, you will be facing real-time improvements and bigger opportunities. From your marketing strategies, accounting, and bookkeeping to your internal communication, you are looking at the best way to scale your company. Before 2021 ends, it is best to consider which business areas you need to fortify to jumpstart 2022 properly.
To help give you an idea, here are three types of software that we think every business should have:
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
In business, nurturing customer relationships is the most crucial aspect of the whole operation. While your marketing and advertising strategies are designed to draw in more potential customers and gather leads, you also need to keep your existing clients and customers happy. It is your company’s lifeline to do so, as doing this is more manageable than doing damage control.
A CRM system allows business owners and managers to handle customer details throughout the buyer’s journey. It also streamlines all integrated processes in the business development stage. Your social media platforms, your website sales funnel, and even your help desk management can all be monitored with a CRM system. It will also help you tailor your marketing strategies better to reach a personalized level with your clients and customers. Lastly, it will give you better insights into improving your marketing campaigns and developing your website with a reliable agency. A CRM system deals with everything related to your customers and helps you manage the information you have gathered efficiently.
Online Payroll and Bookkeeping System
Businesses all have to deal with accounting and finances, whether the nature of the business is far from the industry. It is a crucial business aspect that you need to fortify as it deals with your funding. One clerical error, one misplaced file, one wrong cell formula can jeopardize the whole file record. You may even realize that you have released the wrong invoice and payments after your bank has processed them. After this, there is total process chaos that will affect your operations for at least another two months. Sure, there are options to fix this, but it is tremendously unacceptable, especially for small-to-medium-sized businesses.
If your team has been doing your payroll manually, imagine the amount of time you could have spent doing other important tasks. In addition, your team would have to hire another officer to double-check everything. People develop second-nature skills, but it is better to automate your accounting processes with payroll software when it comes to figures and numbers. Not only will it make everything faster, accurate, and effortless, it will also provide you and your accounting team with accessibility and accurate insight projections. The features will help business leaders estimate funding and other monetary responsibilities in advance.
Time Tracking and Productivity App
Ever since the pandemic, many businesses have been driven to embrace and make the work-from-home setup work. Although it seemed easy for some organizations, other companies relied on hourly productivity and quota-based outputs. Industries such as Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs) depend on the number of resolved customer issues to consider a working day a success, and ensuring that everyone on the team works as efficiently as possible is a little bit tricky with work-from-home. Given that it is different in the office, there will be valid reasons for work disruptions as well as invalid ones. As a business leader, it is up to you to maximize productivity app solutions to address this issue.
While micromanaging is not advisable in any industry, time tracking apps like Time Doctor will help you monitor where your team is in a particular task. You can also see which tasks are taking more time and resources all the while giving your staff the liberty to control their personal timers. The app also has screencasts features every three minutes, detailing what your team is doing.
Final Thoughts
After the pandemic, businesses have learned to keep up with the digital transformation if they wish to survive and make the cut. Thus, if you do know that your business can still do better in this regard, this is the time to do so. After all, technological advancements currently drive everything forward.