How to use technology to grow your business

Lyn Newbury, Accounts and Business Advisory Services director at Azets, discusses how technology can power up and grow your SME.

1. Understand how technology can help your business

There are four key ways that technology can help your business grow.

• It can help you collect and analyse data generated by your business which you can use to improve. Instead of waiting until month-end when your accountant does your books, technology-driven apps can give you real time information about which customers are making you money, where you are winning most business, whether your business and marketing plans are working, which employees are more productive, and so on. You can harness this data to meet your project goals and increase business growth.
• Technology can help you automate your business, whether automating your customer support/acquisition, production flow, inventory, sales fulfilment or administrative and accounting processes. Some tasks that previously were largely manually based can now be largely automated and can give you time back.
• Technology can improve collaboration and connections in your business. Tools such as Microsoft 365, Slack and Trello are extremely powerful and very effective at making your team work together better.
• Finally, technology can help you acquire more customers with tools ranging from automated emails or social media campaigns, to integrated CRM marketing systems that target specific types of customers.

1. Create an implementation plan

As an existing business, you need to think tactically about how you improve what you do by using technology. It is important to plan how you are going to do it, then take it a step at a time. Create a plan starting with what your customers want and work back to how you will deliver a compelling product or service, then consider what this means for your teams, processes and systems.

Make sure you understand strategically how you want to evolve your business model, then think critically about the technology implementation process to start making those changes. Often, businesses try and do it all together and fail.

1. Don’t take your eye off the rest of your business

Some businesses view technology as being the answer to everything. It is not. It is a very important and powerful tool, but it is important not to forget about the other aspects of your business, whether that is your staff and how you are helping them develop their skills, understanding your customers, or the financial health of your business. Businesses focused on being tech-enabled to the exclusion of everything else will not succeed because they are forgetting about the other core elements of the business.

1. Monitor your technology requirements on a regular ongoing basis

Just like your business strategy, plan, and modelling, using technology is a continual process. So, once you have decided how to use it, make sure you regularly measure and review its effectiveness to check it is delivering the benefits you expected. If it isn’t, then fix the problem, either by reconfiguring your technology , or by finding a better alternative.

We are here to help

For more information on how you can use technology to power up your SME business, please get in touch with Lyn Newbury, on 01233 629255 or at Lyn.Newbury@azets.co.uk.