Business runs on the cutting edge solutions provided by the latest technologies. In order to remain competitive, you must implement technological solutions in your workflows. This goes for software for small businesses and large scale hardware rigs like a server system or cloud-based sharing drive for larger enterprises that require seamless connectivity between team members and their terminals.
Investing in technology is a great way to boost your business’ footprint in the marketplace and to increase productivity among your staff as a result of the increased functionality at their fingertips.
Start with your connectivity needs for greater productivity.
Many businesses find that VPS hosting is the perfect way to boost productivity by enabling teams to access storage capabilities as if they were working with large server room facilities. VPS solutions are powerful alternative hosting applications that remove the hardware element from the equation. This means that your team won’t have to fight with downtime issues or malfunctions that can come along with server room infrastructure. Rather than battling with the technology, moving your operations to a virtual private server will give you all the connectivity of an in house system with the flexibility and cost-effectiveness that drives innovation without limits. VPS servers are used across all industries as well. Those with a series of interlinked web sites, or hosts on large scale gaming platforms, benefit from the high speeds and low overheads and pricing of a VPS solution as their go-to at all times.
Setting up a VPS is easy, and the management of a virtual private server as a permanent fixture of your business’s solution is a perfect component of the IT department and its subset of careers in technology for self-proclaimed geeks.
Use the appropriate hardware for your team’s needs.
Many teams get hardware buys horribly wrong. Purchasing departments often over or undershoot the needs of the development team, either buying machines that are way too powerful—and expensive as a result—for the required tasks or laptops with little processing power that are therefore unhelpful.
Rarely do non-technical purchasers strike a happy medium between the two poles. Finding the right equipment for your business’ needs is essential for both keeping costs low and for giving your staff the tools that they need in order to complete the tasks at hand. Your team may need laptops, tablets, desktops, or a series of printers and component materials, or you may need technical software licenses in order to conduct normal business operations. Making sure that your development team works with the accounting department to get the right equipment will help streamline your overall output over the long term and ensure the happiness and productivity of your team as they continue to perform in the office.
Use goal setting and tracking software.
OKR coaches often speak of the importance of goal setting and the ability to track progress in real-time. Many business leaders shrug off these notions as corporate babble, but the effectiveness of a toolset like the OKR framework is something transformative for businesses that are struggling to set and meet goals, deadlines, and interim objectives.
OKR—or objectives and key results—is a decision making framework that helps businesses generate enormous productivity. The ability to track goal progress in real-time is the primary benefit of this system, but the entire process of creating and working toward these overall goals is informative for your business practices and can help immensely when you’re looking to create additional efficiency or driving toward a new product release. OKRs have been made famous by Google and John Doerr, one of the giant’s initial investors. Google uses this framework across market segments and through different levels of management in order to track progress at all levels of the business.
The feedback loop begins with a statement of objectives, which are often reworked and tweaked multiple times as you and your leadership team work out exactly what it is that you hope to accomplish. Setting objectives can help inform the overall priorities of a business that hasn’t quite figured out where it hopes to go yet. It’s generally best to only focus on a few at a time to avoid becoming overwhelmed. Once these are set, the key results must be finalized; these consist of milestones along the way to completing an objective and are measurable in real-time. For instance, an objective might involve selling 100 units of your business’ newest product. At any time, your sales team can report back a live figure of sales of that item (your key result), helping you to track its progress at any moment.
Lean into the newest marketing techniques to build greater brand awareness.
Marketing is critical to finding long term success. In order to continue growing to critical mass, your company must engage with clients at a personal level and become a staple in their lives. Regardless of your service or product, you need to build brand loyalty through constant usage of marketing techniques custom-built for the modern world.
Today, more than three billion people use social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The bite-sized distribution of content means that creators and advertisers have to be wittier, faster, and more talented than ever. Outsourcing this task to a creative team with years of experience at the cutting edge of social media marketing might be the best option for delivering this new and niche type of content to your primary user base. Your in-house team may not quite be prepared for the direction of this form of brand management, but the future is only going to include more of it, so learning how to incorporate these techniques into your branding and advertising now is a great way to move ahead of the curve.
Incorporating new and exciting technological advances into your workflow is a great way to usher in the new realities of corporate structure and momentum. For a business leader like yourself, learning how to generate sales and growth while bringing in the best of what’s around is the only way forward.
