Technology, AI

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1st February, 2018

Technology for business

Understanding how technology can help your business in the time that it takes to plait your daughter’s hair.

Before you turn the house upside-down trying to find an elastic band, we’ll comb through how technology can benefit your business as well as business activities it can help streamline.

That’s about two minutes of reading time.

Technology often goes hand in hand with developing effective business systems. These ultimately aim to increase the efficiency and productivity of your business.

Integrating technology into your business has many benefits. They include:

1. Efficiency

Technology saves businesses a lot of time, money and effort.

If tasks are repetitive, they can probably be automated with technology. If tasks are physically too difficult for humans to do, there’s probably technology that can do those instead.

2. Accuracy

Computers are far more accurate than humans, especially when it comes to tasks like number crunching.

Using technology will often mean you make fewer mistakes, especially when it comes to tasks like accounting.

3. Consistency

Technology can make sure processes and products are more consistent. This is true for activities from data entry all the way through to branding and graphic design.

4. Scalability

As technology can increase your output and productivity, it will help your business to grow more quickly.

Think about how much bread a baker can make by hand in an hour, versus the amount he could make with the help of an industrial mixer and industrial oven. The quantities that industrial equipment could achieve would much, much greater.

5. Innovation

Staying up to date with the latest technologies can help you do better business in new ways, just like Airbnb used the internet to disrupt the hotel industry.


Key areas where technology can assist business


Here are three major areas where technology can help your business do better:

1. Accounting

Accounting software is one technology that almost all businesses use.

It not only helps you record your financial data, but it can help with reporting and forecasting, getting paid quicker and making sure your records are accurate and consistent.

2. Resourcing

One challenge that many businesses face is figuring out how to best utilise their staff. Luckily, there’s technology that can help with that.

There are many programs that can help with creating and managing staff timetables, project management and time tracking. Some examples of these are Tanda and DaPulse.

3. Research and development

There are many free resources that you can use to help you do your initial research and development for your business or product line. Google Trends and Survey Monkey are two examples of these.

Top 3 takeaways

  1. Technology helps make business systems more effective.
  2. The benefits of integrating technology into your business include greater efficiency, productivity, accuracy and scalability.
  3. Technology can help make various business activities easier, such as accounting, resourcing and research and development.

READ: Understanding business software