Many organizations view information technology (IT) as a painful but necessary overhead expense, an unfortunate cost of business that should be managed and kept as small as possible. In reality, IT can be a powerful engine for revenue growth and increased profitability.
In this article, we will examine several different ways that IT can generate revenue or reduce costs, and we provide a real-world example of each approach.
- How Technology Can Grow Your Business
- Advantages And Disadvantages of Technology in Business
- 4 Digital-Tech Strategies for Driving Revenue Growth at Your Small Business
- How to Grow Revenue With Technology
- Four Ways That Information Technology Can Increase Revenue
- How to Increase Revenue Using Digital Marketing
How Technology Can Grow Your Business
Technology is about innovation and innovation in business is all about doing things differently in order to provide better products and solutions, and improved service to customers.
Technology is not just essential for day-to-day business processes, but it can also help companies to achieve growth and success when utilised effectively. Successful businesses don’t view technology simply as a way to automate processes, but instead, use it to open up new ways of doing business.
Utilising Mobile Technologies
Mobile technologies can bring a multitude of business benefits that all help to bolster growth.
Both the extension of flexible working rights in the UK and advancements in mobile technology have contributed to the increasing number of people working outside of the traditional office environment.
Investment in mobile technologies can help businesses to promote a happy workforce, with staff enjoying an improved work/life balance. This is generally thought to be beneficial for companies, as a happy workforce leads to increased productivity and reduced costs as a result of increased staff retention. Everyone’s a winner.
Mobile technologies can give a significant boost to efficiency and productivity because they allow users to complete a wide range of tasks from virtually any location. It has become possible to have full office functionality on-the-go. This simply means that more gets done, because staff don’t have to wait until they are at their desks to respond to colleagues and customers or read and edit important documents, for example.
Mobilising the workforce via technology can also help a business to make those all-important savings that are necessary to maximise profits and encourage growth. With employees able to work away from the office, savings can be made on physical space and the running costs associated with maintaining larger office premises.
To utilise mobile technology for optimal results, businesses should not only invest in mobile devices but also consider cloud solutions that allow users to access the same applications and services from multiple devices and locations. These will also enable effective collaboration, so employees can work well as a team even when they’re not in the same physical space.
Utilising Digital Technologies For Effective Marketing
Businesses are now operating in an era where having a strong digital presence is essential, not only for success but often simply for survival too. The lack of a strong digital presence is thought to be a contributing factor in the failure of many SMEs, half of which are failing in their first five years of existence. With limited marketing budgets, SMEs need to be wise about how they utilise digital technologies for maximum impact.
The key is to develop a clearly defined digital marketing strategy, including your aims, your tactics, and how you’re going to measure performance. Many companies are digitally active, but not following a defined strategy. This can lead to resources being wasted and opportunities being missed.
A good website will, of course, be essential for the vast majority of businesses. This doesn’t just mean something that looks pretty; an effective website should be user-friendly, mobile responsive, and optimised for search engines. The latter, in particular, requires ongoing attention.
As well as a good website, channels such as social media marketing, Email marketing, and pay-per-click advertising can be extremely effective. Digital technologies can accelerate business growth because they allow companies to reach a wider audience and build lasting relationships with customers to promote brand loyalty.
Utilising Productivity Software to Reduce Costs & Improve Customer Service
Many different elements contribute to business growth. These include providing a good level of customer service, minimising operational costs and maximising revenues.
Technology can help businesses to achieve all of these objectives. Increasing productivity and efficiency is key to reducing costs and maximising revenues, which can then be invested in growing the business.
Productivity software is designed to help businesses improve operational efficiency, replace laborious paper-based processes, and reduce costs. The most commonly used productivity software packages include those for office productivity, accounts, communications, and email.
The scope of business productivity software has expanded considerably in recent years, with the development of cloud and mobile technologies.
Cloud-based applications are often ideal for SMEs because they tend to carry a lower up-front cost and limit the burden of in-house management. They can also be used across a range of different devices and all locations where an internet connection is available, which further helps to boost staff productivity and efficiency.
Business growth also depends on acquiring and retaining customers. This requires businesses to provide a consistently high level of customer service. Technology can help with this, also. Modern customer relationship management (CRM) software and Professional Services Automation (PSA) is reaching new heights of utility, benefiting both businesses and their customers alike.
It’s all about integration, these days, and the latest CRM and PSA solutions can integrate seamlessly with business communications systems to provide insights that help boost customer service levels and promote first contact resolution.
Advantages And Disadvantages of Technology in Business
Advantages
1. Ease of Access to Information
The World Wide Web, abbreviated as www has made the world a social village. This is because information from all around the globe is widely available on the internet.
While most of the news you get to see on social media is purely factual, one may also see image results for particular news. Not only more news is available, but all such information is also straightforward to access.
All thanks to modern technology (and computer giants like Dell, IBM, Apple, etc.).
One can get to read a book in the comfort of their bed and a cup of coffee. EBooks are available on the internet for this purpose. The modern technology has replaced radios with televisions, and now even televisions have been digitised to “LCD’s” and “LED’s”.
Efforts are underway to create more reliable sources of information. All this is possible only because of technology.
2. Saves Time
Have you ever faced navigation problems in an unfamiliar town? Yes, we all have faced such issues when we move to a new place. Be it a business trip or a vacation; modern technology allows you to enjoy your outings by helping you navigate to anywhere.
One can search for a particular place and then even pinpoint their specific destination. The application itself does rest. It won’t even let you miss a single turn, and nowadays it even shows you the traffic situation on your route.
3. Ease of Mobility
Ever imagined your life without a car or a bike? Surely not because technology has placed these things under our foot.
The importance of a vehicle can easily be judged from the fact that the distance between the United States of America and Australia is nearly 15,187 kilometres but you can travel just in 16-17 hours.
Even less than in a day and believe me, you won’t be ever regretting these 16-17 hours of your life. Airplanes, electric trains and cars which are being improvised every single day have made all this possible.
4. Better Communication Means
It is a fact that modern technology has replaced old technology. And we cannot imagine our lives without this replacement. Letters were the most common mean of communication less than a century ago, but now no one would even think of writing a letter because why prefer a parchment on a video call?
Instant messaging and sharing of photos and videos was never so easy before.
We have to accept that it’s only the use of technology, which makes it harmful otherwise nothing can beat the level of comfort in our lives because of technology.
5. Cost Efficiency
One of the main goals of technology includes making things cheaper and more affordable for people. Therefore, people see cost efficiency these days due to technology.
The machinery of great benefit is available for so little price that we cannot imagine.
More often competition takes place between two or more industries which results in even lesser prices.
6. Innovation In Many Fields
Technology has truly resulted in digitisation and modernisation in many fields. Either it is the field of medicine or farming or electronics, technology has resulted in a global revolution.
Better techniques in farming have resulted in more and healthier food. The technique of “layer farming” takes even less space and produces more food.
The better health of animals guarantees more yield of dairy and poultry products. The health sector has also benefited a lot from technology boom. Even the incurable diseases like cancer have a proper cure now.
There are so many other fields also which cannot survive without the backbone of technology.
7. Improved Banking
Less than a decade ago no one ever thought that they would be paying in bitcoins rather than dollars. Cryptocurrency has recently got viral because of its usefulness.
No one would now have to wait in the long line of banks just for paying their utility bills.
8. Better Learning Techniques
Bring some fun to your classroom. You can improve your teaching skills and integrate scientific methods to bring motivation to your students. Many software and electronic gadgets are introduced to help students with their education.
The simplest example of a calculator can amaze a person. Multiple calculations and various binary operations, the answer comes with just a click.
9. Disabled, Are Now Abled
Modern science and technology have now made nearly everything possible. Recently, brails which works on electronic pulses have been invented. Artificial foot, smart sticks and what not is invented.
Disabled are no more disabled. They are surely in the long run of success along with the normal ones.
10. Artificial Intelligence
The new concept of artificial intelligence is growing up fast, and it is gaining much popularity. The reason behind is that this might bring a whole new era of revolution.
No humans would have to think anymore because the possibilities are that an AI System would be able to think about how to improve it. This would give a break to the human generation and probably one of the greatest favour of modern technology on us.
Disadvantages
Here are some major disadvantages and risks that technology can lead us into.
- Too much data is being circulated, and not all companies take full responsiblity of handing user data – this leads to many data breaches and privacy issues
- Anonymity, split personalities, and fake personas
- Technology and access to information in a central location has given rise to new kinds of crimes and terrorism
- Reliance on technology has increased social anxiety, where people are more comfortable communicating with others through messages and chat apps, but not physically
- Too much content, gaming, and indoor activities have impacted how people live their lives – in turn leading to high obesity rates, more health issues, and new kinds of addictions
- Over dependence on gadgets
- Our attention spans are dropping – the average attention span of humans recently dropped to 8 sec from 12 sec in the last few years. Companies like Facebook and Snapchat argue that a 2 sec/3 sec video watch time should be considered a “valid” view because attention spans on their platforms are very less. Isn’t that scary?
- Family distancing – people in the same room don’t talk to each other, but only to their devices
- Social isolation and loneliness
- Laziness and lives of convenience
- Technology is wiping out contentment – where everyone is running towards acquiring more, and not being grateful for what they possess
- Virtual experiences are taking preference of real physical experiences – with technology advancements, we’re moving in an era where we will forget to decipher between what’s real and what’s unreal.
- A large part of the workforce get replaced with new technology causing unemployment in some cases (computers was a term that referred to job titles that people possessed)
- With people carrying their work laptops home, and checking work emails at home, while sleeping, when waking up, in the bathroom, there is a gap left between family and work-life
- Too much information but no knowledge, people browse through thousands of news items everyday, but none of it is retained to a point where it becomes knowledge.
- More accidents on the roads due to accessibility of vehicles and ease of movements
- Nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction are at a point that they can wipe out humanity if a global conflict escalates to a point of no return
- Commercial production of food, and daily household items, is causing many health problems, and creating a sick and a weak work always in need of the healthcare system
- The industrial age has lead us to climate hazards, global warming and a polluted environment
Like everything in life, technolofy should be questioned and looked at from a moral, ethical and a human lens. We need to take responsibility and ownership of where we steer the technological advancements to continue to be beneficial to the goodness in the world.
4 Digital-Tech Strategies for Driving Revenue Growth at Your Small Business
In a world that has rapidly become integrated with technology and social media, small business owners should constantly be looking for ways to use digital technology to increase revenue.
For many, using this technology for advertising has been the primary method of driving sales (think Google AdWords, Facebook, and Instagram ads, display network advertising). However, there are other digital-tech strategies you can employ that will help keep your business in the green.
SMS Tech
Many companies often ask customers for their emails to send them promotions and other savings that can cause them to buy from them. But, many of these emails are often sent to spam folders, where they’re automatically deleted after a period of time.
And, if they do manage to make it to your customers’ inboxes, it’s unlikely they will be seriously looked at. On the other hand, SMS services for small businesses can help you reach customers. These services allow you to directly send messages to your customers with the discounts and sales that your company is offering in that given period. A text is a lot harder to ignore than an email, and they may be intrigued by the discounts you’re offering.
Couple Brand with Digital Customer Engagement
It’s also a wise strategy to use the digital space as a place for your customers to engage with your brand. The value of this strategy cannot be overstated, especially in the age of social media influencers. If you sell clothes, for example, your customers can easily help you with marketing.
Simply place a page for your business on Twitter, Facebook, or even Instagram. Then, ask your customers to show off your branded clothing when they wear them. This can make customers feel loyal to your brand and enjoy wearing it. This is also a great way to advertise your brand without costing anything.
Advanced Analytics
It once cost a lot of money to figure out marketing trends and what was working and what wasn’t. Now, however, this can be done more affordably with AI-backed analytics. This powerhouse can basically look at the market and tell you where your marketing is succeeding or failing.
Such services can usually come up with solutions, too, so you can put your marketing budget in the area that will benefit your company the most. This technology also has the capability of making predictions, giving you a forecast of how consumer preferences will evolve over time.
Connecting with Customers
Digital technology can also offer you a way to speak directly with your customers. Using social media platforms, you can ask for feedback and then listen to what they have to say. They may point out a few soft spots in your business that you need to change in order to keep up with their demands.
Using a reporting system can keep track of the high-volume complaints, which can help your employees make the best decisions of where they need to focus their attention. Your customers are perhaps the greatest resource for helping you determine what changes you need to make in your small business. The more you can connect with them directly, the greater the odds of seeing your business succeed.
Running a small business can be difficult, especially in today’s highly competitive market. That said, with these emerging digital-tech strategies, you can help your company stay afloat. And keep in mind that this is by no means a comprehensive list. With digital technologies of all sorts easier to access and use than ever before, you’re sure to expand your customer pool and see revenue growth.
How to Grow Revenue With Technology
Do Not View Information Technology as a Utility, View it as an Engine
It’s hard to believe that just thirty years ago desktop computers were a rarity in business and that twenty years ago Internet connectivity was just becoming common in organizations. Ten years ago we hadn’t even seen the first iPhone or Android phone. Now everyone has some combination of a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, and a phone; even the most junior employee has more computing power readily available than an entire company had in the 80s.
Computers are all around us, and it’s easy to get used to them as just another tool of business.
Now we treat IT as a utility, like the lights and the plumbing. In fact, many organizations view IT as a large and unfortunately necessary overhead expense. What was once new and exciting has become familiar and boring, and we no longer envision the amazing things we might do with all of this power at our fingertips.
Information technology is a powerful engine for growth.
The data from several studies, along with our own observations over 16 years of development projects, supports our assertion. In fact, IT investment often pays off better than investment in advertising or R&D.
Four Ways That Information Technology Can Increase Revenue
Let us now look at four specific ways that information technology can increase revenue and/or profitability: increased operational efficiency increased scalability, increased revenue, and improved customer experience. We also present a real‐world example based on our own work with our clients.
Increasing Sales Through Location-Based Analytics
Insights gained from analyzing location-based business data can be collected from cameras, sensors, mobile devices and social media channels. The results can help make strategic business decisions as well as guide immediate operational decisions.
Starbucks uses location-based analytics in numerous ways. The company uses a customized geographical information system to accurately project foot traffic and average customer spend, helping it to place stores where they will be most successful. The system is also used to create targeted promotions such as launching a Frappuccino promotion to coincide with a heatwave. This enables Starbucks to capture the value that competitors missed out on.
Location-based analytics close the gap between social media and the physical world, turning online interactions into real-world revenue. Personalized marketers have long focused on who, what, when and how — matching the right lead and the right content, at right time and in the right channel. Location-based analytics lets them add the where component.
Technologies such as location-based sensors and beaconing services enable targeted offers to appear when your customers are in close proximity. Location-aware apps can gather information on the travel patterns of potential customers. In-store customer tracking offers deep insights into browsing patterns and lets you adjust store layouts and product displays to maximize sales.
Use Advanced Analytics And Targeting to Find Customers
Traditional marketing uses a combination of historical data, marketer’s experience and informed guesswork to create buyer personas and to choose the right methods to reach them. Today, AI-based tools automatically evaluate what is working and what isn’t, and autonomously adjusts marketing to reach the right potential buyers.
Tools that once required enormous investments and overhead to implement are becoming easier and less expensive. They don’t require data scientists; with SaaS models and pay-as-you-go pricing, they can be used by almost any business.
Harley-Davidson of New York City uses an AI-driven marketing platform to identify the customers most likely to buy and then looks further to identify additional people “in the wild” with similar attributes. The new leads are automatically targeted with the marketing campaigns proven most effective. The system works: The company found itself with a 2,930% increase in sales leads.
Of course, not all AI systems achieve such impressive results right away — they can take time. It’s important to remember that the difference between traditional analytics and AI-based systems is in their abilities to autonomously improve. The volume of transactions and data will influence the model more than the passage of time, as the system has more reference points to learn from.
Building The Brand Around Digital Customer Engagement
Research by Harvard Business Review shows that customers who are emotionally connected to a brand are twice as valuable in the long run. Today’s digital natives appreciate brands they can interact with on their own terms. Sure, some companies will need to rethink their entire business model to survive (Toys R Us and Blockbuster failed here and were eventually overrun by the successes of companies like Amazon and Netflix). But many companies simply need to use digital channels to connect with their core audiences.
Burberry has worked for more than 10 years to transform its historic luxury brand into a digital experience. The brand developed an advanced platform and emphasized integrations with Twitter and Facebook. It collaborated with leading fashion photographers and encouraged customers to upload pictures of themselves wearing Burberry’s signature products. The work paid off, and the company’s impressive revenue growth has been attributed to the digital brand experience.
Digital customer engagement starts with identifying target audiences and segments and understanding their existing digital footprints. Choosing the right channels is an early decision with long-term impacts. While Facebook and YouTube dominate as social media channels (about 68% of adults use Facebook), other social media platforms can attract more specific audiences (Pinterest, for instance, is used much more by women than men).
Closing The Deal With Next-Best-Action Marketing
We are all familiar with traditional product-centric sales approaches, with their impersonal feel (“Do you want fries with that?”). The digital era has ushered in marketing and customer support techniques that offer highly personalized and contextual offers and services.
By using next-best-action (NBA) calculations, you can provide recommendations that are most likely to result in positive outcomes based on the unique customer and the specific situation. Advanced customer relationship manager (CRM) systems born out of the digital era enable real-time analytics and machine learning on the fly and help enable NBA. By eliminating bothersome and redundant offers across channels and focusing in on what the customer was most likely to respond to, NBA shifts the relevance, quality and frequency of customer contact.
It’s important to keep in mind that NBA is more than a complicated version of upselling and cross-selling. NBA requires contextual information about your customers and the situations. Big data sources of structured and unstructured data — including external data that you might not otherwise use in operations — can give the system important clues about a customer, their mindset and their likely reactions. Artificial intelligence solutions can mine this data in a way that sales or support representatives, who have only seconds to respond to a customer, cannot match.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, once said, “Companies that get confused, that think their goal is revenue or stock price or something. You have to focus on the things that lead to those.”
There are innumerable ways that digital technologies can grow your top line — building your brand, finding your customers and closing the deal. You just have to choose the right strategies and technologies for your organization.
How to Increase Revenue Using Digital Marketing
Digital marketing addresses one or a combination of these strategies through business visibility and lead generation that brings in new customers and new projects. The strategies can be used to increase revenue through digital marketing.
Focus on the clients who visit your site:
With digital marketing, make sure your focus is on your audience. It is a golden rule forgotten by many. Visitors may not feel attached to your products when the information and the tone of your site focus more on you as the seller instead of the clients. Small verbiage like this can subconsciously discourage clients who were intending to purchase from you from carrying out the actual purchase.
Include benefits in your headlines:
Your headlines play a significant role on your site. It is the first thing most visitors encounter on your site. You can take advantage of this fact by grabbing their attention and compelling them to actualize a purchase.
A successful headline is able to highlight the problems being faced by your target audience. At the same time, it will indicate the benefits of your products in solving these problems. Once the audience identifies their problems and how your products will solve them, it will be easier for them to make the purchase.
Apply data and marketing analytics:
After establishing your site and interacting with your potential and actual customers, keep tracking and collecting data and visitor information. Analyzing the data and information collected will give you proper insights and enable you to increase your sales by making the necessary adjustments.
Don’t treat all clients the same way:
Although it is good to understand how your sites perform as a whole, it is more important to understand what or who performs better than the other using business intelligence dashboards. Segmenting the users will help you to learn the different patterns among them and how they interact with your site. You can use this data to leverage what works for the high-performance groups and also expose the low-performance groups – maximizing your marketing expenditure and returns.
The digital marketing world is constantly changing with new technologies. While it is not necessary to try every single new technology, it is essential to keep yourself updated on what works for your business and for your clients. Understanding your target market and clients is fundamental in improving your digital marketing and increasing your revenue.
Finally
Technology doesn’t only help to increase your sales; reduce inventory costs, improve customer satisfaction, keep track of your profit margins, adopt a just-in-time relationship with even suppliers, create control over inventory-resources and so on.
If you’re running a startup, small-medium business or just going to start, you should prefer open-source based solutions. Cloud solutions are basically for large-scale or enterprise-level businesses.