As a result of the pandemic, the digitalization of businesses was enforced by new customer needs. Although companies had to adapt quickly to the recent changes, this situation was an opportunity for development, which led to innovative products and services and business improvements. So, if you want to grow your business with the help of digital tools, here are five applications to help you!
Provide a single source for communication
To perform well, businesses need to communicate efficiently to avoid mistakes. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to create a corporate culture that focuses on active communication, but that’s why digital tools can help employers accomplish this.
While there is plenty of software out there for this purpose, it’s best to find the one that fits your business. But programs like Slack or Microsoft Teams are the most used among companies because they provide plenty of productivity solutions to assign tasks, clear out vagueness and maintain a stable work rate. Besides these essential metrics, good communication has more benefits for your team, such as:
- Promoting trust between employees and the team leader. Encouraging collaboration will make your team achieve their goals more efficiently.
- Enhancing engagement. As long as your team feels safe about exposing their ideas, you’ll receive better ideas and feedback when solving a task.
- Better relationships with clients. Inspiring your team to communicate and put into the effort to teach them how to efficiently approach clients will help you with better customer retention rates.
Keep track of safety, regulation and compliance
As a business owner, you have a duty of care for your employees, meaning that you need to provide training and a safe work environment to ensure protection from harm. In order to do that, you also have to be up-to-date with the latest safety regulations and manage data. Software like EHS can help you prepare for audits, manage complaints, check equipment and much more.
But what is EHS? Short for Environmental Health and Safety, this software provides a centralized place for your company’s safety program management. You can prove your government regulatory compliance and manage health and safety data through a single application. You can store all your essential documents and EHS key metrics for a real-time overview of your business performance.
With such software, your business will benefit from:
- Paperless processes: beyond being environmentally friendly, you won’t have to carry around documents and paper files.
- Efficient centralization: storing data in a single place will help you save time and simplify your tasks.
- Worker engagement: by involving your employees in the safety process and having them update the software, you’re improving morale and productivity in the workplace.
Saving money: such an application can help reduce labor costs and allow the safety team to spend their time more efficiently.
Keep up with customer’s expectations
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a system that plays an important role in your company’s success. Such software can help you understand and address your customers’ needs and increase retention (and many more). You’ll need CRM solutions to get ahead of competitors and win sales while finding new customers.
Platforms like HubSpot offer cloud-based software with features that can help you stay up-to-date with your performance, for example:
- Email marketing allows you to build a relationship with your audience while driving traffic to your website. This way, you’re making your customers aware of your new products, discounts and services without being too assertive.
- Segmentation simplifies targeting your products. This feature lets you identify the right market for what you have to offer and find ideal customers. For example, if you sell cat food, it’s easier to split your audience into segments based on whether they have a cat.
Task management helps you monitor your project’s tasks from start to finish. This means you’ll be able to prioritize tasks better, collaborate and allocate resources efficiently.
Scale your business for rapid deployment
In a business, scalability is the most important metric to observe in order for your company to grow. This is where cloud storage comes as a solution for accessing and modifying data from all over the world. With cloud storage, you can:
- Backup your data so you won’t have to worry about losing information;
- Remotely update and sync your files to ensure productivity;
- Share files easily to anyone collaborating on a project;
- Keep your files encrypted so that everything is safe and secure;
- Avoid external hard drives that can be a cause of data breaches.
Cloud software is easy and efficient: you upload a file to the cloud storage, and it gets saved on a server that you can access from anywhere worldwide through an internet connection. While the file is no longer tied to your device, you can have multiple versions of your files to access. Such software is perfect for remote work, as you have any documents at your disposal wherever you are, which is an important improvement for any business. OneDrive is among the best cloud storage applications, and it provides more features for businesses (but the free version is also packed with quality services).
Keep your finances organized
Whether you have a small business or a bigger company, you need to keep your finances organized and up-to-date with the latest financial regulations. While having an accountant help you is mandatory, the software can be an efficient tool for them to use and avoid repetitive tasks that will lower productivity rates.
Investing in digital accounting tools can help with managing taxes, expenses, receipts and payments quickly, and it can also help you save money by:
- Increasing data security.
- Minimizing cost of services
- Scalability and reliability
- Improving speed and productivity
- A streamlined system
For example, QuickBooks offers accounting software tools by providing a dashboard for financial data and records, reports, invoice generators, payroll processing and much more. Furthermore, with such an application, you can sync your bank account and business credit cards so that your data is always up-to-date.
In conclusion, if you want to develop your business, look for the latest digital tools and see if you can adapt them to your company’s needs in order to thrive in the market.
