Technology As a Value Booster

Right now, we’re witnessing the dawn of a new era. The era of decentralized offices and remote work. Is your business ready for it? Are you? Welcome back to Expertel’s weekly blog post, where today we’ll be discussing a few important aspects for companies looking to adapt to our current, ever-changing landscape of work spaces and surging technology opportunities. That’s right! Today we’ll be focusing on finding the best ways to use technology as a mean to add more value to your business, so if you’re already preparing your business for the challenges of the future or are planning to do so, you’ve come to the right place. Before we begin, if you’re new to our blog, we’d like to let you know that there’s a ton of useful information on this topic that we’ve covered on our previous entries, so make sure to check them out to get the best insight for your future plans. With that being said, let’s dive deep into today’s subject. Here’s our list of 5 ways to add value to your business using tech.

1. Remember, Bots Never Sleep

Customer care is usually on the top of everyone’s list of most important reasons to choose which company they want to do business with, and stay with it as well. It’s true, nobody likes to be kept on hold for 30 minutes to fix an urgent problem, much less if they’re not able to actually fix it. That’s why, one of the most impactful ways to convince your potential clients and partners to choose you, is guaranteeing that you’ll be able to deal with their problems in a timely manner. There are many ways to do this, like hiring more employees to cover night and day shifts, but that solution also entails training and monthly upkeep, which drains a lot of time, resources and budget. Instead, our proposed solution is to build yourself a bot that can take care of your customer’s problems right away, at any time. By doing this, you’ll be saving a bigger portion of your budget since you won’t need to spend more money and time on training, nor on extra hardware, while also providing an instant tool for your potential clients to solve their issues or get in touch with your company without feeling ignored.

2. Ready, Ask, Done

While we’re fresh off the subject of bots, let’s also talk about automatization. While we, at Expertel, rely on a dream team of experts for every service we offer to get things done right and fast, we also think about companies who don’t have these advantages (yet!). In that case, our bet would be on full automatization for common or simple processes. Why not go even further with more complex processes? First, because we’ll cover that on our next item, but more importantly, because gradual adaptation is safer when you’re still dipping your toes on the deep end. Starting with the basic things allows you to gauge how comfortable you feel with automatization, as well as measuring results in a smaller scale, which in turn means lower risk and better oversight. Now, it’d be unfair to say all this without also admitting that human workers are able to handle the same complex tasks, albeit with different deadlines. That’s human nature though, we can’t change that (yet!). What we’re trying to say here is that, atomizing some processes will allow your workforce to get tedious tasks done instantly, which means better productivity and faster output.

3. Make Your Tools Fit Your Needs

On our previous blog entry, we dedicated an item to talk about the advantages of building your own work-collaboration platform in the context of remote work. Now, for this topic, we’ll have to bring it up again because when it comes to added value, there’s pretty much nothing better than tailored-fit. It doesn’t matter if you go for a single-purpose platform or a multi-tasking beast, if you choose to build your own tools, you’re basically guaranteeing that the result will be exactly what you need from the very beginning. Another great advantage of building your own customized software, is that you’re getting everything you need and nothing you don’t, which means that you’re using 100% of what you paid for. This is HUGE savings if you’re just getting your business up and running, because what you’re basically doing here is streamlining your workflows from the start, which will definitely save you time, budget and office space in the future.

4. Optimizing Is Key

Regardless of whether you choose to invest your budget on your hardware or your workforce, what you should be aiming for generally speaking, is simplifying. It’s harder to break a tool that works with few pieces, like a screwdriver, than breaking a tool that relies on many pieces working together simultaneously, like a laptop. The same goes for your business. Streamlining and optimization are key to boost your company’s results, as well as your value as a brand, because then you’ll be able to offer a better, faster service to your customers. As we previously mentioned, by optimizing your digital work tools and platforms, you’re freeing up resources and time, which, done correctly, allows your teams to save their time (or even learn new skills!) to do more important tasks.

5. Keep the Cost Under Control

Now, before you call us out on this one, we’ll admit right now that this last tip is not tech-oriented, but still, you’d be savvy to finish reading it. Any business owner would agree that adding value to your business will always come with a price tag. It doesn’t really matter if the number on that tag has 3,5 or 7 digits, because at the end, it all comes down to the bottom-line. One of the hardest things to do as a business owner is finding a sustainable (and efficient) balance between human and machine investment to make sure that you’re adding value to your company instead of removing it. Disregarding, or worse, skipping careful planning can lead you to costly mistakes, such as overspending on hardware, hiring too many people at once or even signing terrible mobile contracts, all of which have the potential to have an enormous impact on your budget. That being said, if you’re currently in this exact situation, the worst decision that you should never EVER make, unless your business is at serious risk of shutting down, is passing the cost of your expenses down to your customers. Raising costs will always go against your customers’ interests, more so if that raise is due to your own miscalculations or mistakes. If you want to add value to your business, and at the same time you’re planning to raise the cost of your products or services, you better find something else to justify it. If you don’t, you’ll soon be learning why. So what is the lesson here? Always be on the side of your clients.
We could go on and on listing ways in which you can use technology to boost your business, but to be honest, we’d rather tell you one-on-one. So, you’re looking for even more ideas on how to add more value to your business or want Expertel to help you get the items on this list done, feel free to get in touch with us by filling out the contact form that you’ll find by following this link to our contact page. Oh! And don’t forget to look for more ideas on our previous blogs, because you’ll surely find some more useful info in there. We hope you found what you were looking for in this article, but if you didn’t, don’t worry because we’ll see you next week, with another topic, in our next post!