Even though Thanksgiving is over, it’s still the perfect time to stop and show some appreciation for the things we’re thankful for. Technology should be at the top of that list if you’re a business owner.Technology gives you the opportunity to automate your business processes. This frees up your time and energy to grow your business. Leveraging the right technology can make running your business easier, more efficient, and more profitable.With so many amazing technologies on the market, there’s never been a better time to embrace technology. Use it to your business’ advantage! Here are four technologies that will make running your business easier – and have you feeling extra thankful this Thanksgiving:
Project Management Tools
At any given time there are most likely multiple projects going on in your business. Each of those projects has different goals, deliverables, deadlines, and team members responsible for completing the overall project.When you have multiple projects going on, it can be easy for things to slip through the cracks. Team members aren’t sure what they’re supposed to be working in, you don’t get the updates you need on important projects, deadlines are missed. It’s completely frustrating – and completely inefficient.But thankfully, there’s technology that can solve the problem. There are multiple project management tools on the market (like Asana, Basecamp, or Trello) that make managing projects a breeze – for both you and your team.Business2Community says, “Project management software is one of the most helpful tools that can assist project managers in being as effective as possible, regardless of the industry.”With project management software, you can create a project, and break that project down into smaller tasks. Then, you assign those tasks and the coordinating deadlines to specific team members. You can track all communication within the project, request status updates, and have your team upload deliverables right into the software.Using a project management tool makes it easy to keep track of multiple projects. This way, you can wrap your head around who’s working on what. It also helps keep your team on task. It ensures they know what they’re supposed to be working on to get their project done efficiently.
Productivity Tools
Everyone struggles with keeping themselves – or their team – on task every once in a while. But with the wealth of productivity tools out there, there’s no reason to struggle anymore.The McKinsey Global Institute reports that “Productivity improves by 20-25% in organizations with connected employees.” Project management software can help on both these fronts, and keep you and your team effective and connected.Track your time using a tool like TimeDoctor; the app will record all of your activities and provide reports that allow you to visualize how you’re spending your time – and identify opportunities for you how you maximize your time and spend it more productively.Find that you or your team members are wasting time during the day on social media or news sites? Try the Freedom app, which blocks access to time-sucking websites during working hours and allows you and your team to get more done.No matter what your productivity goal – whether it’s to keep better track of your to-do lists or to make your meetings more efficient – there’s a tool out there to help you reach it.
CRMs
If you want to better manage your customer relationships, CRM is one of the best technologies for your business.CRMs (which stands for customer relationship management applications) allow you to organize all of your customer information. This way, you can better manage your communications and your relationships with those customers.So, for example, let’s say you wanted to send an email to all of your customers who purchased during a certain window in order to offer them a special discount. Rather than manually trying to find all the purchase orders during the dates, you could just enter them into your CRM and have them instantly.CRMs are a must for just about any type of business. However, the CRM that’s best for you will vary depending on your needs. If you’re struggling to choose a CRM, this article from Hubspot has some great information.These are just three technologies that will make running your business easier. However, they all have one thing in common – they help to automate your business processes. When you automate things in your business, it removes the need for you to have to repeat tasks over and over, which saves you time, energy, and money – and makes running your business immeasurably easier.This Thanksgiving, make sure to give thanks for the things in your life and business that you’re grateful for – including the technology that makes it all easier.
