It isn’t 1995 anymore. We used to be able to run a business with minimal technology. That’s the way almost everyone ran their business. Do you remember carbon paper? Multi-part forms? If you were really advanced, you had a dot-matrix printer. The world has changed a lot since those days!
Today, those things no longer help your business. Study after study shows that if you are still using old technology you are hurting your business. As 2020 came to a close I had one business owner tell me that if they had not upgraded their technology the previous year, COVID would have killed their business.
The days when technology was an unnecessary expense are long gone. Technology is now a necessity but not an expensive necessity when you consider the return it can and should provide you. Your use of technology could and should be your competitive advantage.
2020 Without Zoom?
How would your year have been without Zoom or Teams? Those tools help with communication but what does the rest of your technology toolkit look like?
This week The Economist published an article where they wrote “In the second and third quarters of 2020 America’s non-residential private sector spent more on computers, software and research and development (R&D) than on buildings and industrial gear in over a decade.”
If your competitors are investing in technology, what you are you doing? How will you compete with others who are striving for and investing in faster, higher, stronger?
Faster, Higher, Stronger
We are not just talking about competing with others for business. You are competing for labour resources as well. This time last year, it was a seller’s market for skilled labour. As more and more baby boomers retire this will return. Will your technology investment (or lack thereof) help or hinder your ability to hire top quality people? The millennial generation only knows a digital world. Do you want to be the place where your people stay only because they can’t get hired somewhere else?
How does your technology help (or hinder) your ability to meet your customer’s expectations? Customers today are accustomed to an Amazon world. How quickly and smoothly can you deliver to your customer?
If ecommerce is to be the saviour of many small businesses in the coming months, is your technology going to help or hinder your e-commerce efforts?
If you have people manually processing accounting and administration work that could be automated, you are not only over-paying for the result, it takes longer, is less accurate (due to re-keying) and not available remotely. And what happens if those admin people get sick?
If you are looking at what changes you can make, contact us for a friendly conversation free of any sales tactics.
