Tech Tips That Will Boost Your Company's Productivity

By utilizing technological innovations, small business owners can give themselves an advantage by making their operations as efficient as possible. Here are four tips that can help small business owners use recent advances in tech to make their companies more productive.

Build A Digital Infrastructure

One metric that plays a huge role in determining the success of a small business is its reaction time. Not having enough inventory to meet demand, not being able to track shipments or being unable to access internal data off-site quickly can all have seriously negative effects on a burgeoning company's productivity and profitability. To avoid this pitfall, small business owners should invest in a cloud-based database. With that digital infrastructure in place, they can securely access orders, inventory and customer information with a few taps on a smartphone.

Stay Connected Via The Virtual Space

One of the key advantages a small business has over a large corporation is that major changes can be made very quickly. However, in order to affect those changes, an owner needs to be able to communicate information to their staff at a moment's notice. As such, it's a good idea to utilize a digital collaboration app. These tools allow teams to meet up in real time regardless of their individual locations and share information, files and photos in the virtual space. And as many of these applications are free to use, they can save you money as well as time.

Utilize Customer Relationship Management Software

The biggest challenge most small business owners face is that there simply aren't enough hours in the day. In particular, the demands of running a business often come into conflict with the need to provide first-rate customer service. Customer relationship management software can be very helpful in increasing productivity in this regard. These programs track and index all of their customer and vendor data across all platforms. As such, they make your sales process much more efficient as they prompt users with customer files the second they call in.

Track Your Team's Productivity

In recent years, a range of productivity management tools have emerged that not only allow for greater level of organization, but also help small business owners optimize team productivity. These applications let users set up projects with a series of individual and group benchmarks. They also track how employees use their time when on the clock, both on-site and remotely. Consequently, you will be provided with data that lets you commend your most productive workers and counsel your less efficient staffers.

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For more tips and inspiration for small business owners,
visit CBS Small Business Pulse Chicago.