What software for remote work, collaborative team product and service development, online sales and payment solutions, and process automation can help optimize business processes for the new digital reality?
2021 is marked by optimization of business processes, when extra cramps can cost a company not just profit but life. Business will optimize all its current activities, adjusting or even shaping a new reality in which everything is constantly changing. The key will be digital solutions to help do this. Here’s what digital technologies will not only improve each employee’s productivity but also increase business efficiency.
Know Your Customer
Today, entrepreneurs have access to a wide range of tools that can be used to digitize all major types of operations. If we talk about sales, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems are widely used for this purpose, allowing to systematize information about customers and effectively use various marketing channels.
Such systems make it possible to manage sales funnels, store all information about clients, deals, contracts, form analytics and reports on key indicators. Typically, CRM systems are integrated with telephony, email and other means of communication.
Analyze It
Next, to tie together all the collected data, you can’t do without setting up end-to-end business analytics.
Collecting data from CRM systems and other places allows you to analyze customer touchpoints, from entry to sale, and disable those advertising channels that aren’t generating revenue. You can set up metrics to monitor activity, to find out what happened today, what customer conversion, where indicators have changed noticeably. You can get this information not in a month but almost immediately.
Suppose you’ve noticed that Apple users don’t check live sports betting offers anymore. Then, you can take action, detect errors, and understand why the conversion has dropped drastically. There are services which help manage mailings, there are settings of automatic chains of letters, there are schedulers for sharing social media posts. You can use different systems, as long as they support all the major social media platforms. This is also one of the important methods of digitalization.
Lots of systems and services are created for this purpose. For example, Aori is helpful for managing online advertising and UniSender is amazing for managing newsletters.
The Art of Communication
Some services unite all communication channels with clients and allow them to work conveniently with appeals which come in through different online chats, through social networks, or by email. The user receives all the information in one window – where the client came from, what his status is. If different people in the company are responsible for different channels, they can all connect to the system. It becomes a kind of business messenger on the site or in the social networks.
One of such services is JivoChat, a multifunctional online adviser that helps you interact with potential clients through the site, social networks, by phone or email. It allows communicating with customers in chat mode and can be useful for companies which get customers exactly from the Internet. Let’s not forget about bots, they are everywhere now. With them, you can forget about answering the most frequent questions and let your employee complete harder tasks.
Replacement for the Accountant
Digitalization also affects internal business processes. Where there are sales, there is accounting, contracts and taxes. Small companies can outsource these functions to third-party services. There they can set up “reminders” of deadlines to file certain documents.
Supervised Projects
There are products that help resolve more complicated business tasks, such as internal company management information systems or project management information systems. These are fully customized services that help go through all phases of project life in a company. This is especially important if the company sells not some simple products but complex integration solutions that are constantly undergoing changes.
Such companies sometimes need to adjust the entire project and production cycle from the business idea to the completion of the project. They have to disassemble the project (product) into many parts. It is unrealistic to tie it all together and keep it in your head or in Excel. Project management systems make it possible to coordinate the stages and make the necessary changes in the process so that project managers are aware of who is at what stage.
Summary
After all, just a few years ago, it was hard to imagine that modern technology would offer such a wide range of IT tools for digitizing almost all key areas of a company’s activities, including sales, advertising, communications with customers, accounting and legal services, and project management.
In the end, the companies that digitize their processes without loss of quality and convenience for their clients will win. So, many more technological innovations and digital discoveries await us, as the process of digitization of various industries will gain momentum.