Menu
How To Use Technology & Telematics To Boost Business Efficiency In 2021
By Rodney Laws | Business
By Rodney Laws | Business
Business efficiency is a must if you plan on hitting its bottom line.
Because if you use your staff, time, resources and money inefficiently then the hard and simple reality is that your company won’t be as profitable as you want it to be.
Technology can help you address a wide variety of inefficiencies in your operations and boost your business efficiency in a broad number of ways.
We’ve highlighted SEO software, task management tools, social media tools and telematics software as four great examples of technology that can do this.
Credit: PX Here
SEO (search engine optimisation) is where you enhance the quality of your website and web pages to increase organic traffic to them.
It’s an incredibly important part of any online business because the more visitors you get, the greater the chances are of selling your products or services.
But to do this you need to rank well in search engines — the lower your ranking, the lower your chances of getting visitors and turning them into customers.
SEO software helps you establish which pages you should enhance and gives you the data you need to make improvements to them. This boosts your business efficiency because it ensures you use your time and effort wisely when optimising your site and web pages.
There are lots of great tools you can use to increase your ranking in search engines. This video from SEO expert Brian Dean highlights some of the best free tools you can use:
So, decide which tool is right for your company and then use it to optimise your web pages and increase the number of visitors you get.
Credit: Flickr
Tasks are a feature of every single business on the planet, regardless of industry and whether it’s in the public or private sector.
Managing the tasks you and your employees work on effectively is essential if you want to run a successful operation. Why? It’s simple. Your business model is built on tasks taking a certain amount of time. If they consistently take longer than you expect, then it’ll cost you more money than budgeted for and erode your profit margins. Task and project management software helps you avoid this.
Project and task management software lets you set up tasks and projects for your team members to work on. A project will be a specific team or client, while a task is the work undertaken — for example, writing a blog post (task) for your marketing team (project).
Using these tools allows you to review how long jobs are taking and the productivity rates of your employees, giving you the data you need to establish who the best people are for certain tasks. This means work is completed at maximum efficiency and your company stays in budget.
In sum, review the tools on the market, decide which one offers what you need, then introduce it to your business and start managing your employees more efficiently.
Credit: Pixabay
While social media has received plenty of negative attention in recent years, there’s no escaping the fact it remains ingrained in society — on both a personal and business level.
Your social media channels are an opportunity to increase awareness of your brand, keep existing customers engaged and attract new interest in your company. They’re a valuable marketing tool when used effectively.
With so many commercial positives to having a presence on major channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok or Pinterest (though it is generally best to stick to around three), it’s vital that your business has an efficient social media strategy. Social media tools can help with this.
Social media tools offer a range of benefits that help support your marketing efforts. The video below highlights some of the best tools your business can use:
While these have both shared and unique benefits, the two key ones are automation and analytics.
Automation allows you to track mentions of your brand and set up notifications that bring these to the attention of the appropriate team members. It also lets you schedule posts and tweets, so your staff can carry out bulk uploads. This makes your media marketing more efficient because it saves your employees valuable time.
Analytics lets you see which posts/Tweets are getting the most engagement, what the best time is to publish your content and a range of useful demographic information. This is great for your business efficiency because it gives you the tools you need to create the content your users want and give it to them when they want it — which will help to boost sales.
So, decide which social media tools work best for your company, then use their automation and analytics benefits to run more effective marketing campaigns.
Credit: PublicDomainPictures
Fulfilment is the last stage in the buying journey your customers take. It’s when you deliver the products or services to them they’ve asked for and do so in the agreed timescales.
It is also when your business becomes the solution to the problem you promised to solve.
What this means is that inefficiencies in your fulfilment process can be catastrophic for your business. If you deliver the wrong items, items in poor condition, deliver at the wrong time, or fail to get the goods to your customers, it could do enormous damage to your reputation.
Telematics software can help you to avoid this. It’s technology that’s fitted to vehicles and records data on three key driver behaviours:
But why is this important and how does it make your business more efficient? We’ll explain.
If your drivers are braking too harshly, driving too fast and taking corners too sharply, it increases the motion in the back of their vehicles. This increases the chances of packages moving, being damaged and arriving to your customers in a condition they’re unhappy with.
Because telematics record all this driving behaviour information, it gives you the data you need to introduce changes in how your staff drive. This reduces the risk of your goods arriving in an unfit state, making it an efficient way of protecting your brand reputation.
If your business delivers goods to its customers then you might want to think about investing in telematics software, as doing this could be the difference between happy customers and furious ex-customers.
SEO software, task management tools, social media tools and telematics software are all examples of technology that can help to boost business efficiency now and into the future.
So, find the best examples of these technologies for your company (the ones that offer what you need and are available at the right price) then introduce them.
