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The Best Software to Improve Operational Efficiency

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StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article | The Best Software to Improve Operational EfficiencyOperational efficiency is the process of delivering quality services with fewer resources. The more high-quality output you can produce with limited input, the more you can sell and the better able you are to serve your customers. When your business is able to maintain high levels of operational efficiency the more profit you are able to make from a project. So, with all the benefits offered, all businesses should be looking to improve their operational efficiency today.

Accounts Payable Automation Software

AP automation software can help you to improve the operational efficiency of your accounts processes. No matter the size of your business or the scale of your operations, you will benefit from using an AP automation system. The software helps you to automate every related process, from invoicing to manual checks, helping you to save both time and money.

Problems with cash flow and accounts can cause issues above and beyond operational efficiency. For example, when you experience issues with accounts and your staff are not getting paid on time, this can lead to low morale, poor worker wellbeing and increased staff turnover.

Chatbots

Chatbots are another very valuable piece of software that businesses can use to improve their operational efficiency in their customer service teams. Chatbots can be set up to answer many routine customer questions, which means that staff can spend their time on more critical tasks.

Not only does using chatbot technology help you to improve the operational efficiency of your customer service teams, but it also benefits your customer relations. The average customer expects an answer from a customer service representative instantly, which means, within 10 minutes from making contact. Chatbots will provide customers with that instant response they desire no matter the time of day, or day of the week they are contacting you.

Employee Engagement Software

The term employee engagement is used to describe the relationship your staff have with their work and your organization. An engaged employee is absorbed in their work and will go above and beyond to further the interest of the organization they are working for. In contrast, a disengaged employee will do the bare minim work and is either apathetic to the organization or might actually try to harm the business’s reputation.

Using employee engagement software can help you to track levels of engagement in your organization. This can help in everything from task allocation to hiring, all of which can help to boost operational efficiency.

Project Management Software

Project management software is another hugely valuable tool that you can use to improve operational efficiency in your business. Project management software enables you to track the progress that is being made with all staff members that are involved in the project.

When managers have access to the up-to-date information that is provided by the software, they are better able to identify potential drains on efficiency. When you are able to identify when progress is not being made as expected, you are able to make changes early on.

5 Effective Ways to Maximize Your Digital Marketing ROI

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 5 Effective Ways to Maximize Your Digital Marketing ROI

In order to get the most out of your marketing budget, you need to constantly monitor the performance of your campaigns to ensure you maximize on ROI. There’s no point investing in ads that aren’t working to target the right customers or keywords that aren’t drawing in traffic, for example. It’s essential to analyze your campaigns using the appropriate metrics and tools. It’s also worth educating yourself on the latest trends, techniques, and customer behaviors. Here are five effective ways to maximize your digital marketing ROI.

Outline measurable goals

Set measurable goals for your marketing campaign. These could be anything from number of conversions, click-through rates, or number of reposts on social media. This will help you tailor your campaigns to specifically meeting these targets. Without clear goals in mind, it’ll be more difficult to design marketing strategies that work. Here is a complete guide on how to set and achieve marketing objectives.

Improve your digital marketing skills

It may be worth improving your knowledge and digital marketing skills. You could even study a course such as an online mba in digital marketing or something a little more short-term. The more knowledge you build on different digital marketing strategies, the more equipped you’ll be to leverage this for your business. You could also consider researching your competition to find out what strategies are working for them. Gather as much information as possible to help you achieve your marketing goals.

Automate certain tasks

Many small businesses are enjoying the benefits of automation technology. You can automate plenty of repetitive marketing tasks such as sending out personalized email campaigns, retargeting ads, posting on social media, and more. This will save you time and resources. You can then focus on monitoring and improving your digital marketing strategies and other more complex aspects of running your business.

Focus on the right metrics

Many people fall into the trap of using the wrong metrics to measure the progress of their digital marketing campaigns. These can end up distracting you from your business goals and throwing you off focus. The metrics you use will depend on the type of campaign you’re running, your target audience, and your objectives. There are certain metrics that are worth tracking, however, including click-through rate, engagement rate, and reach. Other types of metrics may not directly correlate with your business goals or increasing revenue.

Monitor your performance

It’s worth investing in the best predictive analytics tools to ensure you efficiently monitor the performance of your digital marketing campaigns. These tools will use data to help you make forecasts for the future. They look for emerging patterns and behaviors and can even predict the ROI of your marketing campaigns. With social media, for instance, predictive analytics can help you decide which content to most and when according to the specific preferences and habits of your target audience. It’s essential to take advantage of all the tools and resources available to you. This will help to ensure you maximize your digital marketing ROI.

How To Take Your Business From ‘Small Fry’ To ‘Big Fish’

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Right now your business is small. You love what you’re doing and where you’re going but you’re starting to wonder how you can progress your business success more quickly. Being a small business is great but if you’re someone who aspires to go from ‘small fry’ to ‘big fish’ then you’re probably wondering what it takes to give your business the boost it needs.

Growing and developing a business isn’t always simple or straightforward, as there is a lot to think about, from budgets to planning. You have to think about a wide number of things if you’re serious about expanding your business. It’s stressful growing a business, that’s a given, but if you get your approach right, it’s worth taking the time and putting in the effort.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | How To Take Your Business From ‘Small Fry’ To ‘Big Fish’

So, what steps should you take to start growing your business? Below is a guide to some of the ins and outs of achieving successful business growth.

Create an action plan

First things first, if you want to give your business a boost and actually see results, you need to create an action plan. Your plan of action should lay out the approach that you are going to take to growing your business.

It’s best to set large targets with a number of small goals leading to each one – this approach makes achieving growth seem more doable. You don’t want to set overly ambitious targets as this can make them seem impossibly difficult to reach. Instead, aim to keep goals achievable – remember, you can always exceed them.

Speak to a consultant

If you feel like you could benefit from some professional advice about any area of your business and how to utilise that to see growth, consider booking an appointment with a specialist consultant. Whether that’s a general business consultant or with a consultant from a more specialised field, such as speaking to a finance consultant.

If you’re struggling with a certain area of your business, such as your brand’s marketing, for instance, then you might want to consider expert marketing consultation. You might find that taking the time to speak with a specialist gives you the insight and knowledge that you need to give your business the boost it requires to meet your goals.

Work smarter, not harder

Be a smart worker, not a harder worker. Yes, growing a business requires a lot of hard work, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be smart about how you achieve business growth. Don’t be afraid to utilise smart tech as a means to an end for your business. Believe it or not, you can use smart tech to make managing your business processes simpler and easier – you can simplify and automate your entire operation.

There you have it, a simple guide to how you can make achieving business growth simpler, easier and more doable. Take note of the tips and ideas above, utilise them for your business and you should be able to make growing your business into a ‘big fish’ a little easier to achieve.

Taking Another Look at Your Talent: Why Redeployment Might be Better Than Redundancy

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StrategyDriven Resource Management Article | Taking Another Look at Your Talent: Why Redeployment Might be Better Than RedundancyMany businesses have struggled since March 2020 and are only just returning to their pre-pandemic operations. During the coronavirus crisis, it was common practice for companies to furlough their staff, but this is now coming to an end as restrictions ease. However, this has left many organisations scrambling to cut costs and potentially scale down their operations.

Many are now considering redundancies as business requirements change in the post-Covid world. However, assessing the talent within your organisation and redeploying employees to other departments could prove more beneficial than redundancies. Here’s why.

It Can be Cheaper

Hiring, onboarding and training talent is a costly procedure. Add redundancy payments that you might have to fork out should you lay off an employee to this, and you have a hefty sum of money.

Filling an internal vacancy elsewhere in the business with an employee who already understands your company’s ethos and methods can be a far better option. It allows you to protect your investment in an employee during the hiring process and avoid further payments if you were laying them off. Overall, this can translate to significant savings, even when the training for the new role is factored in.

It Can Boost Morale

Downsizing your operations through redundancy is sometimes necessary. However, it can dramatically impact the morale of the staff members who retain their jobs. This common occurrence is often referred to as “survivor syndrome”. It is characterised by lower morale, engagement, motivation, dedication and productivity.

It is easy to see how this could impact your business as a whole, so it is likely something you will wish to avoid in your company. Redeployment can be an effective strategy to boost morale and motivation in your organisation.

While it is often driven by financial requirements, the practice offers an opportunity for growth for redeployed staff members. Additionally, it reduces the incidence of “survivor syndrome” that would otherwise be rampant with redundancies. Therefore, it can be an effective way to boost productivity and morale.

It Can Make Your Company More Adaptable

During the pandemic, businesses were forced to adapt to a changing climate. Many working practices had to be suspended, and other employees were forced to work remotely from home. For many businesses, this adaptation was a learning opportunity. Many companies sought to use the pandemic as an opportunity to cross-train their employees, bringing new skills into their workforce.

Rapid redeployment will allow your staff to grow and develop their skills and provide them with a better understanding of how other departments function. Ultimately, this can prepare them for additional opportunities that arise in your company and boost your workforce’s adaptability as a whole. This will allow your organisation to roll with the punches better whenever it faces adversity.

Conclusion

In many cases, it can often be a better option to retrain staff members for roles in other areas of your company. At present, many businesses are adapting their operations to a post-Covid world. For many, this means redundancy is a real possibility. However, for the reasons outlined above, it can often pay to redeploy staff instead.

Why Traditional Invoicing Is a Bottleneck: Do These 4 Things to Remedy It

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article | Why Traditional Invoicing Is a Bottleneck: Do These 4 Things to Remedy ItThe accounts receivable departments must process incoming payments every day and keep financial records up to date. Unfortunately, some companies do not complete these tasks on a daily basis and create bottlenecks. The processes could lead to longer waits for profits, and some companies cannot wait that long.

By following better practices, the business owners can avoid bottlenecks and keep their cash flow coming each day. Several common mistakes made by AP departments can also create further unnecessary complexities.

1. Try An Invoicing Service

Many companies face difficulties with managing all invoices for their customers, and they often turn over some accounts to service providers that help the company collect the overdue balances. Unfortunately, many collection agencies use tactics that do not get the job done and alienate the customers. Even the best customer the company has could face circumstances that cause them to miss a payment, but this doesn’t mean they deserve to constantly get harassing phone calls.

Instead of using these more traditional tactics, many companies are using less invasive practices to give customers a more convenient opportunity to pay their outstanding balance without calling the company to complete the payment. These methods could allow the customer to follow a link in an email from the company that guides them through a more convenient payment process.

The collection efforts won’t interfere with the customer’s personal life or make them feel overwhelmed. The service provider sets up a link that redirects them to an online payment solution and the process is quite simple. Business owners can learn more about using instant invoices by contacting a service provider now.

2. Speed Up Invoice Processing 

Another issue that many companies face is a failure to process and send out the invoices. Companies may have a larger collection of clients and invoicing is a major task for the AP department. This could become a serious issue for the company and prevent cash flow from coming in on time. Some companies pick a specific day of the month to print a huge collection of invoices instead of processing an invoice immediately. Customers that don’t know how much they owe the company cannot send in a payment and update their account. They need an invoice right now.

In turn, the AP department becomes overwhelmed with the number of invoices they must send out at the end of a week or month. These slower processes just delay the payment process and make the company wait longer to get their payments from customers. If the company implements practices that invoice the customer immediately and sends out the invoice, the company receives more payments throughout the month and eliminates common cash flow problems.

3. Analyze Customer Payment Habits

Companies must also analyze their customers’ payment habits, and they must determine when it is time to let certain customers go. A customer with a persistent history of tardy payments isn’t just hurting their own credit or making themselves unworthy of using credit. They are also slowing down the business and preventing the business from collecting the money they are owed by the customer.

By using data mining practices, the company can generate reports that show them which customers are late with their payments and which customers have a history of getting late charges. While companies do not want to discourage customers from buying their products or hiring them for their services, there comes a time when some customers becomd a major problem for businesses and delays the time it takes to get their profits.

Customers that never pay their payments on time create more of a problem for the business than letting the customers go. For example, if the company allows customers to buy products and pay later, the customer must pay later and settle their debt to the company. However, if the same customer is late persistently, they are not a valuable customer and are simply making it more difficult for the company to operate. It’s time to let them go by blocking their account.

4. Ensure Access for Workers Who Need the Information

Another major dilemma with companies that use outsourced customer service or collection services is that they don’t have the information available. All workers who will manage customer accounts need access to the customer files. If they cannot open a customer’s account and review the data, the workers cannot accept and process customer payments.

The business owner will need to review all connections to their database to ensure that the workers have the correct credentials for the task. Customers do not want to call in to make a payment and face one or more transfers to other departments. This takes up the customer’s time, and it will discourage them from doing business with the company. Companies that have automated systems must streamline these processes to ensure that customers’ payments are accepted and processed immediately.

By invoicing immediately after the service or order, the company can also make it possible for the customer service representatives to find the outstanding balance. If the invoices haven’t been processed, they will not show up in the system. This could lead to customers facing delays that are not convenient for them and make them want to get the same services or products somewhere else.

Accounts receivable departments must take on the task of collecting all outstanding payments for the company, and they must follow more streamlined processes. For many companies, slowdowns in invoicing make it difficult for them to collect the customers’ payments in a timely manner. Some companies do not have the time or resources to process invoices only once a month, and the process could prevent access to high volume of capital that they need during the month.

When reviewing strategies for processing invoices, the companies could find a more efficient option that makes it easier to collect now. By using immediate invoices with a direct link to the payment system, they can collect the money faster and update the customer’s files instantly.