Old habits die hard, especially when it comes to adopting new technology. Rather than changing with the times, many small to medium-sized businesses find it easier to adhere to the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
But in this era of digital disruption, a wide array of emerging and increasingly affordable technologies, including powerful analytic tools and AI, can help you do more than fix what’s not (yet) broken.
Adopting the right tools can help you discover the “voice” of your business.
Every day your business is talking to you about your product line, your marketing strategy, your employees’ productivity, your key performance goals and more.
Embracing smart technological tools in your business can help you hear the story your business is telling.
Those insights can help you make decisions that not only will help your business thrive today, but also better adapt to change in the future.
Here are a few tech advances that can help you listen to the voice of your business:
Powerful analytics tools
With the latest cloud-based analytic tools, you don’t need to have a Ph.D. to crunch the numbers on how your business is functioning and performing.
Data analytics help organizations evaluate product lines, assess customer ROI, enhance employee performance, build scenarios for entering new markets and more.
Data contains the story that your business is trying to tell; the right tools help bring that story to light through analysis, reporting and visualization.
Finance and accounting tools
When it comes to accounting and finance functions, it’s not just large enterprises that are embracing cloud-based technology.
According to research by staffing firm Robert Half and the Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF), nearly 60 percent of American businesses with annual revenue of less than $25 million are currently using cloud-based technology for their finance functions or intend to do so in the future.
By automating manual accounting work with cloud solutions, you can free up your employees to focus their time on more value-added tasks.
Faster, smarter decision-making with AI
Adopting the right technologies will also help your employees build skills they’ll need to succeed in tomorrow’s world and workplace.
Gartner estimates that by 2020, the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse. And as artificial intelligence (AI) evolves, it promises to become a valuable helpmate to employees, eliminating routine work and guiding their decision-making.
Increasingly, people must be prepared to collaborate and converse with technology in an almost human way.
Do you have the right technologies in place to hear the voice of your business, and translate its messages into strategy?
Are you equipping your teams, in every department, with the advanced tools they need to succeed today and in the future?
If the answer is no on either front, it’s time for action to spare your business, and its employees, from the risks of becoming casualties of digital inertia.