The cost of efficiency

Keeping pace with technology can become cumbersome if not managed correctly.  In an increasingly competitive market, your business needs to run as efficiently as possible.  It can be difficult to quantify the cost of inefficiency and the true impact it has on a business.  Technology  can offer countless opportunities to maximize efficiency within your business operations, and therefore, save you time. When your business is operating efficiency, it gives you more time to market your business, increase sales and productivity.

Below are a few recommendations how technology can help your business work more efficiently, cut costs, improve customer satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition.

1. Give employees secure, consistent access to information.  You have an advantage over larger competitors because the ability to react quickly to business changes. This edge is impacted if your company network is frequently down, unstable, or unsecured.

2. Deliver anytime, anywhere access to employees on the go. Employees working remotely need to be able to reach the people and information they need—anywhere, anytime while implementing security protocols to reduce unauthorized access. Tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs), cloud collaboration and virtual data access can allow your employees can work outside the office and still enjoy safe access to the business network.

3. Create effective business processes with partners. As security breaches and data hacking becomes more prevalent, many companies make secure business processes a prerequisite for doing business with them. To meet the business needs of your partners, you need a secure, reliable network.  Completing quarterly network and security audit is crucial to understand a business’s vulnerabilities.  This important aspect is often overlooked until disaster strikes.

4. Make it easy to work together. Smooth collaboration between your partners, staff, suppliers, and customers is a sure-fire way to boost efficiency while also reducing costs. With the correct technology your business can take advantage of important tools such as shared calenders, videoconferencing, and unified communications for easy collaboration.

5. Employ a managed service provider. Is managing a network, troubleshooting your IT infrastructure the best use of your employees’ time? In most situations, it is advantageous to hire a managed service provider for most of your IT and network administration. Working with a managed service provider can free your staff to focus on other tasks and use their time more effectively.

6. Develop a long-term technology plan. The process of replacing obsolete hardware can interrupt your employees and bring the office to a standstill. You can minimize such disruptions by carefully determining short- and long-term business objectives and working with your network vendor to deploy technology that matches them.