Srikanth
Technology solutions can help firms to elevate their productivity and profitability by reducing wastage, automating processes, and building strong customer connections among others.
The current business environment can be best described as a state of continuous flux. Shortening product life cycles, hypercompetitive markets, and flickering consumers’ tastes are significant challenges that businesses across product categories and service domains are contending with. To address all these issues, technology can play an instrumental role and this partly explains the growing demand for technology integration across the board. While there is a number of ways technology can help firms, the following are the most crucial methods whereby the use of technology can lead to an increase in the productivity and profitability of organisations:
1) Improving efficiency: Using software such as business process management, Big Data Analytics, and customer relationship management, organisations can harness the power of technology to elevate the efficiency of their functional procedures and operational mechanisms to a new level. These solutions allow the companies to get rid of their inefficient legacy systems and offer them an opportunity to optimise their existing processes and procedures. All these improvements and optimizations lead to a considerable increase in efficiency and a reduction in production costs, allowing organisations to increase their margins even without raising the price.
2) Superior customer experience: Exceeding customers’ expectations is one of the sure-shot ways to remain relevant in the business for a longer period of time. Technology can be of immense help here and by using the solutions such as Chatbots, omnichannel support, and visual search, organisations can elevate the level of their customer interactions and engagements. Further, firms can use gamification, AR/VR, and artificial intelligence (AI) to anticipate changing customer trends and deliver solutions that are aligned with the preferences of prospective buyers.
3) Remote Working: Thanks to the growing internet access, the concept of remote working has found considerable traction among industries. The Covid-19 pandemic further popularised the trend with remote working becoming a norm rather than an exception. Another significant reason behind the widening acceptance of remote working is the benefits this work model offers to all stakeholders in the ecosystem. Especially for companies, this format has paved the way for tapping into the best talent pool and onboarding the best people from any part of the world. Remote working also saves a lot of money with Forbes’ study revealing an average savings of $22,000/year for firms allowing employees to work from remote locations. Another research showed that remote workers demonstrated 13% more productivity than employees working in offices, thereby enabling better business results on both productivity and profitability fronts.
4) Automate processes: By automating repetitive tasks, firms can channel their time, effort, and energy to accomplish tasks that are crucially important from strategic and tactical perspectives. Automation also leads to a reduction in errors and will lead to a significant reduction in the cost and manhours related to accomplishing menial jobs. Some of the potential areas where automation can bring a lot of savings for the organisation include posting on social media, email automation, proofreading, and scanning applications for the hiring process.
5) Customer Connection: The use of new-age technology platforms including metaverse, virtual environments, and digital canvassing can help firms establish strong and lasting connections with their customer base. The use of digitally connected universes can open new avenues of growth and opportunities for companies operating in different product categories and service domains. On metaverse platforms, customers can create their digital avatars, connect with like-minded people, and create communities for engaging in meaningful interactions. Digital worlds also allow consumers to experience the products and services virtually before actually buying them in the real world. Besides, technology also helps consumers to manage warranties, redeem rewards, and raise a complaint in a completely seamless and effortless manner. No wonder, all these conveniences lead to stronger connections with customers and help firms to stay relevant in the long run.
Technology adoption can help businesses to perform to their full potential and increase profitability by retaining existing customers while acquiring new ones. The integration of technology can help all stakeholders in the value chain and result in the creation and delivery of better value propositions to end consumers. Not only companies and consumers get benefitted but suppliers, partners, and society as a whole also emerge as beneficiaries from the adoption and integration of technology in business processes.
Contributed by: Mitesh Bulsara, Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer (CTO), CoffeeBeans
