Businesses, small and large, are using computer and internet technologies to gain an edge over their competitors. This is especially true for small and medium-sized companies in the US whose increasing reliance on technology solutions to strengthen their customer engagement activities, marketing, business analytics, and product development has seen their businesses grow incredibly fast.
There are numerous technologies to take advantage of depending on the nature of your business.
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Technological Innovations That Can Actually Grow Your Business
Many businesses often overlook certain technologies ignoring the positive impact they could have on the business. While it’s true that keeping up with the steady flow of innovation can be overwhelming for businesses and consumers alike, sometimes it’s necessary to keep track of technology that can add value to your business.
Some of these technologies include business analytics, data management, and customer relationship management systems.
Analytics and Data Management
Want to dip your toes into the big data pool? There are numerous firms offering business analytics solutions to help you do exactly that. But before that, you have to establish your data sources and then collect and analyze valuable data for use. Data can help you improve customer experience, targeting, increase customer retention, and figure out what marketing strategies work best.
Beneficial customer data to collect may be collected via casual conversations with your clients, surveys, cash register transactions, and customer behavior on your website. This will help you grow your business by unlocking valuable insights for any business regardless of the size.
CRM
Customer relationship management software comes with numerous integration options, and is the base of all the technology you will adopt as a firm. You can only be limited by the CRM system you choose, and there are many of them out there with Salesforce being the most popular, and by far the best — but that largely depends on who you ask. If you are looking for a Salesforce alternative, you will be spoilt for choice. CRM systems like Zoho and Microsoft Dynamic could be decent Salesforce alternatives.
A CRM system helps you grow your business by reducing time spent on the daily back-and-forth activities that can really hamper your employees’ productivity. With a CRM system, you will have the ability to consolidate all your information in one place and as a result, time spent looking for information is minimized. It also eliminates scalability challenges, one of the biggest impediments to the growth of a business. Last but not least, adopting a CRM system streamlines daily activities by automating workflows and internal processes.
According to industry experts, the technologies expected to top the list this year will be the merging of virtual and real worlds via Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality devices, the technological impact of the digital business shift, and the advent of intelligence everywhere. These technologies, if adopted and properly implemented, can have a significant impact on SMBs and large enterprises alike. Other important innovations that can really give your business a push include voice over business protocol (VOIP) — the ability to make voice calls over the internet, and market automation.
