Technology has been and will continue to be one of the easiest ways to grow your business. Here are a few tech tips to get you headed in the right direction.
Expand your communication arsenal
Communication in the workplace should never be taken for granted. It can directly impact anything from collaboration and employee morale to customer service and product quality.
But this doesn’t mean you need to communicate more; it means you need to communicate smarter.
To do that, you need to expand your communication arsenal with technology. Take a look at 6 of the best tech tools you can use to improve office communication.
Consider allowing personal tech in the workplace
It’s easy for business owners and managers to tell employees not to use their phone at the office or not to use personal apps to manage their day — and that’s because, traditionally, that’s what the rules were.
But now, things are different.
The more you allow your employees to customize how they work and what they use to complete that work, the more likely it is that they will be more productive and have a better attitude. Don’t be so quick to shoot down personal devices and consider being open to things like social media.
Migrate to a managed services platform
There’s no way your business can be successful if the technology you do embrace always falls apart. If it causes problems and creates downtime, then that will ultimately hinder productivity and promote a lack of distrust in your company.
This is why managed services has recently become so popular with SMBs.
When you outsource the management of your infrastructure to an IT provider, here’s what will happen:
- Your technology will remain in prime working condition, and you won’t suffer from as much downtime.
- You’ll pay a flat, monthly fee for the management of your technology, and as a result, you’ll have the ability to effectively budget for your IT needs.
- You can receive strategic IT guidance from a team of experienced technicians and engineers.
- You can move towards a more modern infrastructure and boost your competitive edge.
Embrace employee mobility
Again, if you give your employees some freedom, it’s likely they’ll be more productive. But this goes above and beyond the workplace itself.
You also need to consider mobility —
- Can your employees work outside the office?
- What are they allowed to access?
- Are they allowed to use personal devices?
- Do they have the ability to access work information and tools from anywhere?
The thing to keep in mind is that mobility won’t just encourage employee productivity. It gives you the ability to capture opportunities when you’re on the go, which makes you more competitive and allows you to go where your customers are.
Here are a few ways your business can achieve greater mobility:
- A communication platform like VoIP that allows you to answer business calls from anywhere, with any device
- A file-sharing solution that enables you to send and receive work files from any connected device
- Cloud-based solutions like Office 365 that allow you to work with company tools no matter where you are
If you’d like more guidance on technology in the workplace, take a look around our learning center. We use our experience as a managed service provider to create educational material for our community.