The Benefits of Tech Innovations for Startup Growth

Companies could save up to $165 billion by 2022 by adopting automation, Capgemini Research Institute claims. Sophisticated technologies, including automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, are not trends of the far future anymore. They are our reality.

Continuous tech development gives startups and small businesses an opportunity to streamline many operations, improve workplace productivity, keep customers happy, and save time and money. Those are all important factors that directly impact your young company’s growth.

Here is how tech can help your business scale faster.

1. Improving Workplace Productivity

One of the major reasons why many businesses face poor employee engagement and productivity is the lack of effective communication among teams. Luckily, this problem can be easily solved with the implementation of the right cloud-based platforms. 

Project management tools

For starters, there are many project management tools built on the cloud, including Slack, Trello, Asana, and Basecamp. Their major benefit lies in the fact that these tools are designed for small and growing businesses. As such, they offer cost-effective and scalable pricing plans. 

Most project management tools are based on simple drag-and-drop features. You can create multiple projects, assign the right staff to them, create and update tasks. Employees will be able to share data and communicate in real-time, as well as receive only those notifications that are relevant to them.

Video conferencing

Video conferencing tools maximize your workplace flexibility and let you manage your remote staff more efficiently. Using cloud platforms like Skype for Business, Cisco WebEx, or Join.me, you will optimize team members’ attendance, reduce travel costs, and let people talk face-to-face, irrespective of their geolocation.

2. Boosting Customer Satisfaction

Today’s customers don’t fall for generic brand messages. Instead, they expect relevant and personalized brand experiences. Investing in the CRM tool may be the right solution for you. With HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM, or Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, you can:

• Collect customer data, such as the status of their orders, previous purchases, purchasing habits, and so forth.
• Boost consistency among your marketing, sales, and customer support teams, as every team member has access to the same data.
• Boost customer experiences with your brand, as you will finally adapt your operations to their expectations. 
• Integrate CRM software with all relevant tools you use, from billing software to surveying platforms.
• Automate many aspects of your job and boost teams’ performance.
• Maximize your return on investment. According to Salesforce, CRM tools can boost your sales by 30%.

3. Expanding Brand Reach Is Easier than Ever

Today, you don’t need to invest in expensive TV commercials, billboards, or pamphlets when wanting to put yourself in front of the right customers. Instead, you can start by building a solid online presence:

• Choose reliable hosting, as it directly impacts your website performance and speed.
• Pick a memorable, simple, and on-brand domain name. You want people to recognize your startup in the sea of similar brands. Many brands are switching from the traditional .com to more creative and brandable domain extensions. For example, you could use .me TLD – a primary domain extension of many renowned brands, like WebWave.me, MSSG.me, or See.me, etc. 
• Use your website to generate leads with optimized opt-ins, lead gen forms, lead magnets, etc.
• Evoke FOMO with real-time social proof tools.
• Optimize for search engines. There are many website analytics, keyword research, link building, on-site SEO tools you may use. 
• Use chatbots both on your website and social profiles to provide exceptional customer support and increase conversions.
• Build a solid and consistent social media presence by sharing high-quality content. Automate your social sharing activities with the abovementioned social media management tools.
• Use social media monitoring tools to track brand/product mentions on social, measure brand sentiment, and communicate with users. Social media analytics tools, both free and paid, will also provide you with deeper insights into your social media performance.
• A/B test everything you do online. Using heatmaps and scroll maps may also help you understand how your users browse through your website.

4. Streamlining Many Aspects of your Business

As a startup hiring a small team, you know how difficult it is to scale in the competitive market. Even if you have an amazing product and a few customers, you still lack people, tools, and resources to get things to the next level. This is where automation can help, letting you do more with less. With it, you can centralize most of your tasks and keep growing your startup without any additional investments. It can benefit your startup in the following ways:

• It saves time. It automates many repetitive processes that would, otherwise, be done manually. Your employees will finally get an opportunity to spend their time and effort on more significant and complex aspects of their jobs.
• It centralizes data insights and communication. By placing all tools under a single umbrella, you will simplify and centralize communication between different departments. 
• It standardizes business operations. Automation and AI let you automate most of your business processes and help you minimize human error and the most typical issues startups face. 
• It boosts your revenue by helping you improve workplace performance and reduce overhead costs. Research says that 35% of businesses believe that one of the major perks of automation is better cost control.

There are many startup operations you could automate, including:

• Social media sharing

Automation and digital marketing go hand in hand. For example, you can automate your social media sharing activities. Many social media management tools like Buffer or Hootsuite will curate and post content for you. You just need to set the posting frequency and times.

• Link building

If you are looking for influencers and bloggers to collaborate with, this is where automated link building tools may help you. They let you combine relevant keywords and Google’s advanced search operators and choose your niche to get relevant results only. Above all, they let you set the right goals and parameters and, based on them, they will weed out anything that doesn’t meet your needs.

• Client reporting

Client reporting tools let you combine different tools and their widgets on a single dashboard. This way, you can track clients’ data in real-time and create personalized reports automatically.

• Logistics and manufacturing

Did you know that a Shanghai-based company fully automated their business by using 20 industrial robots that work without human assistance or supervision? While this still may seem like a sci-fi movie for your startup, there are still certain aspects of manufacturing you can streamline. 

For instance, using MRP tools, you can streamline all manufacturing processes, from raw material procurement to inventory management and sales. This way, you will optimize your manufacturing processes and avoid overselling and overproducing. 

• HR

HR professionals are often jacks of all trades, needing to handle piles of documents, forms, requests, and processes. Luckily, automation can help them a lot in this area. For example, they can use chatbots to streamline internal communication with employees and handle their most basic requests. You could also automate payroll processes, as well as use AI people analytics software to learn how satisfied employees are.

Over to You

With the continuous adoption of sophisticated business technologies, companies not using them will soon start lagging behind. Implement the technologies mentioned above to gain a competitive advantage right from the start. Above all, this is one of the most strategic ways moves to make when scaling your business faster.