Ways to Invest in New Business Technology

Business technology can help streamline processes and increase both efficiency and revenue. But how do you implement new technology without increasing costs to maintain this technology?

According to PwC's Global CEO Survey (PDF), 40% of CEOs believe their companies won't be viable in 10 years if they continue on their current path. Fortunately, there are many ways to introduce new technology in business without increasing staffing costs.

Accounting software

When you're planning to increase revenue while controlling spending, accounting software is a low-cost business technology option that can pay serious dividends. The ability to easily and accurately track expenses, issue invoices and receive payments can reduce time spent on manual tasks and help boost profits.

For a low monthly cost, you can start with accounting software with low to no setup fees. Once you're up and running, you can:

• Run reports to get new insights into your most and least profitable cost centers
• Identify areas for increasing cash flow
• Optimize marketing, production and materials costs

Payroll management

Accurate payroll is vital for growing businesses because it helps ensure various taxes are paid and payroll deposits are made. Payroll management technology can help you streamline your data entry process, and some services even provide customer support.

It's an efficient tool that can help your business organize a single source of truth for wages, hours, accounts numbers, deductions and withholdings for employees. Payroll software can also scale with your growing business and track exportable payroll reports so you stay informed.

Full-service providers can impound necessary tax payments and handle direct deposit in a secure and seamless fashion. When preparing for tax time, your payroll provider can even handle your employee tax documents to help make sure you meet IRS filing deadlines.

Digital marketing

Gone are the days of the three-pronged advertising approach: TV commercials, print ads and direct mail. Today, most customers are mobile and consume media on screens of all sizes and multiple channels.

Digital marketing software can help you streamline how you reach your customers and tailor messaging for each channel. And if you don't already lead with customer behavior analytics, now is a good time to review this approach.

Marketing solutions

If your business is consumer-facing, consider one of the many social media marketing solutions available. For instance, exploring customer relationship management services, or CRM, such as Salesforce can help you build an email list of customers, set up personalized marketing campaigns and reap the benefits of tracking robust analytics.

Design tools

To keep your visual content fresh, consider low- and no-cost online graphic design software available from sites like Canva, which offers high-quality templates and graphics that can help boost your brand and identity.

Choosing targeted digital marketing tools can help personalize messaging and create better visuals for your audience, which may lead to higher engagement, click-through rates and boosted sales. Remember, meeting your customers online is key to expanding your brand and outreach.

Customer service

If your business has a significant customer service component, you may already know that in-house staff and outsourced call centers are costly solutions. However, new AI-driven technology like chatbots offer low-cost, high-return solutions for increasing efficiency in customer service protocols.

In fact, the retail industry has identified AI as critical to its future success, with 40% of retailers adopting it in some form.

Considerations when using chatbots

You can train and program chatbots to answer a wide range of your customers' simplest queries. You could even tailor them to your brand's unique voice and tone. Chatbots also integrate with many CRM programs to help collect specific customer data for future interactions.

As AI transforms how businesses work, remember that there are risks—depending on how you're using the technology. For instance, some businesses are using AI for writing insurance content, but it's also important to have a human representative fact check and modify the copy to ensure accuracy.

You can redirect concerns that can't be fully addressed by a chatbot to a call center or customer service representative. This can help decrease overall call center costs while increasing customer satisfaction by ensuring customer concerns are addressed by representatives when needed.

The bottom line

Growing your business is a delicate balance of controlling costs and maximizing revenue. With the right business technology, you'll discover how adding new capabilities can help streamline internal operations and allow your employees to focus on other priorities.

In the short term, your business can establish and enjoy new efficiencies. In the long term, you'll benefit from cost savings that can be reallocated to areas of your business where capital is needed to fuel growth—a win-win scenario for your employees and your business.