Modernising Your Business: Time To Keep Up

Have you ever felt like your company feels a bit… outdated? Not in the timezone sense mind you, but more in the “doing things like in the good ol’ days” way? Not that sticking to your guns is a bad thing in itself, some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs have made it to the top by sticking to their own and what they know. But sometimes, you have to take a step back and look at what is just an objectively better decision to make for your business. Might be a tough task to get started with initially, but the less stubborn and adamant you become about your ways, the more change you will see, hopefully for the better.  

Let’s go through a few ways in which you could modernise your company, and stay competitive in this brutal business world.

Why not start a newsletter?

Though newsletters are not exactly new technology, they have started popping up much more prominently within the recent years in the virtual world, getting sent off to hundreds of customers basically free of charge. All sorts of businesses now run their own newsletters, updating their customers on promotions, limited time deals, sending out pictures of new stock or products, stock and whatever else they can possibly fit. Mostly, they are sent out to customers who signed up for the newsletter on your company’s website, if you do not have an existing page or registration widget for it then consider implementing one. People will not only be more incentivised to visit your site, but will see all the new deals you are advertising  on it by result.

A social media presence.

You might think to yourself that your business is in the category where it just doesn’t benefit from a few social media accounts. Chances are, you could not be more wrong. No matter how unfitting it may seem, having a few social media accounts as a business will surely boost your popularity amongst potential customers as well as people who will possibly tell others about you. It might not seem like a surefire success at first, but keep in mind that social media, first and foremost, is free. Anyone can go and make an account on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever else the flavour of the month social media app is. Due to its free nature, and the fact that it is on just about every platform imaginable, mobile or otherwise, social media has grown in popularity an insane amount over the past decade. This meaning that advertising, and putting your business out there on social media tends to be rather effective. Of course, you can do it for free too, as long as you are willing to run the accounts yourself, the only fee you will be paying is your time. If you find yourself unable to manage, hiring a social media person or team might be a great option for you.

Improve your current tech.

Chances are, by the year 2017 your company has seen quite a few changes if it has been around for a while. Maybe your computers are still utilising old, extremely large and light gray monitors with a distended backside and pixely displays that show scalines on camera, if that is the case, then it’s probably just about time to move on. If you are indeed interested in purchasing some new PCs for your employees, but want to stay on cheaper side of the things, you can easily do just that investing in some generic office computers which all use Microsoft office and not really much else other than the occasional internet browsing. This means you do not needed to buy the “latest gaming rig” for around 2 thousand with DDR4 RAM and a GTX 1080. Of course, if you do actually need a good computer for your employees to do work effectively, spare them their mental health, and get them decent PCs. Another thing that might be outdated in your company is the way you handle faxes. In order to keep them secure, consider looking into making use of a secure fax service, to keep everything running in tip-top shape. By this point, faxes are a tested and stable technology, and while other alternatives may have come up, there’s a reason why they are still around.

Communication between staff.

If you are in a big building with all the offices split apart and everyone in their own little corner, communication and a sense of team spirit often disappears along with it. If you feel like your team could greatly benefit from much easier and quicker communication, you should look into a way to allow them to do so without having to walk across the whole building. With programs such as Slack, which is absolutely free, you can get your teams to have a simple, organised and intuitive way of communicating with one another. Allowing for voice calls as well as instant messaging, different channels and servers for categorising projects or teams, it is the perfect work-related communication platform. If you feel like setting up a Slack system wouldn’t go through with your employees, you can always resort to something a bit more basic that may be lacking in functionality, however, it is bound to have more people already on it. Smartphone apps such WhatsApp provides support for group chats and easy access.

Decentralise.

Having your own trusty staff members which have been by your side for years is definitely invaluable, the only problem being that your staff members most likely have no idea how to do some things. Now this is normal, like everyone they have a direction in which their expertise is, and unless your staff is extremely extensive, chances are you will need something done at one point that is sadly not covered by your staff’s ability. Outsourcing work to other people, no matter if they work for an agency or if they are freelance, definitely has it’s positives. Getting  a helping hand from someone who specialises in something your staff cannot provide is simply the cheaper and wiser option, especially when all you need done is a quick job like vectorizing a logo.