It’s Time to Look to Technology to Improve Business Performance

Featured article by Calvin Paige, Independent Technology Author

No matter how you look at it, performance is a key issue when trying to justify your bottom line. In fact, one of the key obstacles to greater profitability is performance. While we’d like to blame high overheads, the cost of supplies and equipment and a million other little things, a lower than usual profit margin can almost always be attributed to poor performance.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t always refer to your employees and it doesn’t always refer to your administration. Sometimes the very platforms you are using in both your front and back end are not performing as they should! If you are looking to grow your bottom line, especially in an ecommerce setting, it’s time to look to technology.

Move over Mainframe Dinosaurs – PaaS Is Faster, More Efficient and Cheaper!

If you are using software that is loaded onto your local computer, one of the things you just might want to do is take a serious look at an alternative, PaaS that resides in the cloud. Not only is it faster and more efficient working in the cloud with the latest and most technologically advanced software, it’s cheaper!

There is nothing like Platform as a Service for improving performance because you can pay only for what you use and both your front and back end software can be located within containers on the very same server or on various servers in the cloud. In fact, they don’t even need to be located in the cloud, but can be drawn from software on a local machine to that cloud-based platform due to an innovation called a connector!

A Look at Leading Front and Back End Platforms

At the current time, the leading ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software that handles all your company’s resources is NetSuite and the most in-demand front end platform is Salesforce that deals with the customer end of ecommerce. Getting them to work together used to be a real challenge but now you can easily connect NetSuite to Salesforce to streamline operations with one amazing connector developed by Celigo.

Unless you have ever tried to integrate various types of software within one platform, you might not understand the excitement about having the ability to connect everything with a few simple commands handled from a dashboard. It’s amazing how you can streamline operations, automate them in the background, and then move on to other tasks. There is nothing like it to improve business performance. Automate as much as possible so that you are not bogged down in tasks while everything else piles up on your desk.

Do as Much as Possible Online

Once you’ve understood just how simplified many of your tasks become when you can operate many of your tasks within one single platform, drawing them altogether while keeping them in their own little containers, you can begin to look for ways to use the internet to your advantage.

If you are looking to improve business performance, use technology as much as possible to make better use of manpower hours. For example, many of your communications can be carried out online, negating the need for runs to the post office or lengthy conversations on the phone. Digital communications can also be automated so that email is sent on a schedule with no further human intervention. Why spend hours on the phone when one email can reach thousands of people and you can schedule them for a batch send.

A New Twist on Staff Meetings

What many of the largest corporations have found is that when a staff meeting is scheduled, productivity comes to a literal standstill. You need to account for more than the time spent in the meeting. It takes some amount of time to wrap up tasks, relocate to a conference room, and grab coffee and refreshments all the while chatting with peers while waiting for the meeting to be called to order.

Now video conferencing is making it possible to cut staff meetings to a minimal amount of time. Schedule the meeting for a certain time and then go live on your video conferencing platform. HR software often has this feature and with the right PaaS, all these features can be integrated into the platform (iPaaS) so that they also run seamlessly because they are ‘connected.’ Video conferencing eliminates all the wasted time because no one ever needs to leave their desks. Let technology do the traveling for you!

Automate Customer Follow-ups

While many consumers still like the personal touch of receiving a follow-up phone call after purchasing a product or service, most are just as busy as you are. As a result, you might be making multiple calls just to reach a customer for that feedback. You can’t avoid getting this feedback because it’s one of the best ways to know what’s working, what isn’t and what can be improved with just a few minor tweaks.

Why not automate following up after dealing with customers? Referring to those scheduled communications, you can automate within your PaaS when and how consumers will be contacted and if you don’t hear back, your system can be set to send a reminder. It’s amazing what technology can do to save you invaluable hours that could be better spent on other tasks.

Summing It Up

At the end of the day, it’s all about performance. Whatever you can do to streamline operations and integrate as many of them as you can into one platform is worth the initial investment. As the old saying goes, time is money, so the less time you spend on routine tasks, the more time you have to spend on other things. Use technology in any way you can. It’s not about replacing people with technology, but giving them tools to streamline operations so that performance is enhanced, enabling them to move on to growing your business.

Examples of streamlining operations would include using a cloud based platform that has the ability to connect bits and pieces of your technology so that no matter where that technology resides, it can be pulled into whatever task you are working on. With a local mainframe, that remains costly and hard to do. Looking to technology to improve business performance? That technology lives in the cloud.