Tech Innovation Creating Realities One Step at a Time
Technology largely defines business productivity nowadays. Myriad services are readily available to facilitate better business management, and more efficient use of scarce resources. By leveraging the power of innovative technical solutions, businesses can cut costs and drive up productivity. Here are 6 Tech Tips to help businesses perform better.
#1 – Computer Generated Accounting Records
Businesses routinely use innovative solutions to manage day-to-day operations. In the days of old, bookkeeping operations were manually computed sans any technology. Mounds of paperwork would be collected, collated, and cross-referenced by a pair of well-trained eyes in the bookkeeping/accounting department. Those days are long gone.
Today, expenses are managed automatically with prepaid debit cards for company employees, corporate credit cards, and carefully budgeted expense accounts. All data is easily synchronized to a central account, and exportable in multiple formats.
Employees can upload all their business-related expenses via smartphones to their corporate accounts, negating the need for manual collection of paper slips for reconciliation at the end of the month.
#2 – Cloud Based Tech
Cloud-based technology needs no introduction to the modern-day business. Even today, there are plenty of bricks and mortar enterprises working with physical servers, hard disk drives, and payment journals. Cloud technology is precisely that – it’s in the air up there … uploads and downloads from servers located in remote destinations. Of course, this is done for backing up important files, folders, and data.
Unlike your hard disk drive which is a physical piece of apparatus at your business premises, servers in the cloud can be accessed instantly, courtesy of the Internet. You save your hard disk drive space and pay for storage with virtual storage services. Be advised that the tech specs are a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea.
#3 – Stock Scanners for Quick and Easy Identification of Stocks
Stock scanners are an incredibly useful tool for several purposes, particularly in financial portfolio management. As a business manager, it’s important to stay abreast of the latest moves in the financial markets. One way to do this is a stock scanner. These sophisticated tools bring the best technology to the fore, for the evaluation of stocks trading opportunities.
With a stock scanner, you can conduct automated assessments of top-performing equities without manually scrolling through thousands of options. Users can input parameters based on specific criteria such as performance metrics (pricing, market capitalization, volume of shares traded, volatility, social media connectivity, et al).
The market is laden with powerful stock scanners nowadays, often referred to as stock screeners, although the latter is more apropos for day trading purposes. Among the best stock screeners out there are CNBC stock screener, Fidelity stock screener, Yahoo stock screener, StocksToTrade stock screener, and others. As a day trader, or fund manager, these scanners are indispensable. By picking the right stocks based on pre-set parameters, it is possible to build a viable portfolio that will deliver returns.
#4 – Content Management Systems
Content Management Systems (CMS) have been around for eons in the technological age. These are basically powerful programs that allow you to manage content for your business website, blog, or work requests. CMS are designed to deliver results through delegation of tasks and responsibilities.
Project managers at different levels of your organisation can assign tasks to freelancers and contract employees through CMS systems. They can be monitored, and controlled in real-time. CMS systems can also link directly to websites, and blogs for instant publishing.
A set of user-friendly features and functions makes it easy for CMS to provide full scalability, flexibility, and ease of use. By allowing for instant content updates, your CMS operations can facilitate collaborative activity for enhanced business performance.
#5 – Powerful Payment Processing Solutions
Payment solutions such as PayPal, Skrill, NETELLER and the like are increasingly useful for small businesses nowadays. Not only do they make it easy for stakeholders to transact with the business through buy and sell options, it’s also easy to transfer funds direct to employees, freelancers, suppliers, and partners. An integrated payment solution such as PayPal can provide greater convenience, and credibility.
Customers and stakeholders alike are more inclined to go with names they can relate to such as PayPal, Venmo, even blockchain-based options like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Efficiency and ease-of-use must be tackled from the user side and the business side simultaneously.
Payment processing companies provide debit and credit facilities to businesses and customers alike. These payment processors are the facilitators of trade and transfer. Amazon Pay, ApplePay, Google Pay, and PayPal rank among the more prominent payment processing companies out there.
Of course, it’s incumbent upon businesses to carefully ascertain the cost/benefit factors with regards to payment solutions. Costs and fees can contribute significantly to the transactions costs. This is especially true if payments are coming from customers, or suppliers abroad and foreign exchange transactions need to take place. TransferWise is far more cost-effective than PayPal which tends to levy exorbitant costs on businesses when forex is involved.
#6 – Social Media Management & Conferencing
If you’re just getting your business off the ground, you will definitely need digital tools to compete in the modern age. The likes of social media management options, email marketing, and customer relationship management are sacrosanct. These are certainly different disciplines, but they are grouped together under the same broad umbrella of business tools. Nowadays, it is equally important to provide for virtual meetings, courtesy of Skype and Zoom.
Videoconferencing software makes it easy to share important information in real-time. It’s also the safest way to bring large groups of people together, during current market conditions.
All of these options should be implemented in totality, based on the needs of your business management functions. If technology brings greater efficiency, productivity, and profitability, then it has to be implemented.
