If you’re in business, your main challenges will include increased risk, rising costs, globalization, innovation, diversity, and complexity. While adopting the right technology will help you process the increasing amount of information, your small to medium-sized business will benefit by following the lead of big business practices that have developed strategic thinking and problem-solving solutions.
Let’s take a look at business software used by large businesses that you could adopt to stay productive and profitable:
1) Make Better Decisions
Business Intelligence (BI) will help your business make better decisions. This technology will help you collect, integrate, analyze, and better present your business information. When you’re doing a BI tool comparison, you may need to decide between MicroStrategy vs. Tableau. Trying to decide which one is better depends on your needs. MicroStrategy will benefit you if you need data discovery and enterprise reporting. Meanwhile, Tableau will suit you better if you’re looking for something that doesn’t require advanced training for clear and transparent dashboard results.
2) Coordinate Your Business Projects
Every business is involved in a variety of projects, and one way of staying on top of scheduling and keeping everyone on the same page is to use project management software. The larger a team and the more remote workers involved, the more complex project management becomes. The best way to cope with a high level of complexity when managing a team is to use a cloud management solution.
As a project manager, here are five benefits you will get from choosing the right project management software:
- You will be able to track how much time each worker spends on a task, and this information will allow you to determine who might need additional training to bring up their skill sets.
- You will be able to ensure that everyone in your team can access the data they need to complete their assigned tasks.
- You will be able to spot any recurring problems early enough to prevent a project taking longer or costing more than you had planned.
- You will be able to decide on priorities and how to allocate the work. You will also be able to eliminate time-wasting tasks that need not be done at all.
- You will be able to manage multiple projects, coordinating the work of different types of teams.
3) Manage Your Money
Playing the money game is analogous to playing football. In order to win, you need a good offense and an equally good defense. In business, your offense is your sales team’s ability to bring in steady revenue and your defense is your accounting team’s ability to manage your finances. The best way to empower your sales team is through customer relationship management software (CRM) and to empower your accounting team with the right accounting software.
CRM
A customer relationship management (CRM) suite offers a variety of features that make it easier to follow up on leads and convert prospects into customers. This software will allow you to manage all your customer accounts and increase return business and track your sales leads to make sure you’re following up in a timely way. It will also make it easier to launch a marketing campaign, manage it, and provide customers with after sales support.
Accounting software
Since there is no shortage of accounting software to choose from, how do you decide which one will work for your business?
Here are two suggestions:
- Choose software that suits the size of your business. If you have a small business, then more complex software will give you more features than you can use. If, on the other hand, you have a mid-sized business, then you may need advanced features that allow you to create financial reports based syncing your data with your point of sale systems and your business bank accounts.
- Use software that is easy-to-use. If software is too complex, it will be too time-consuming to figure out all its features. Easy-to-use software will allow you to do things like automate expense and financial reports, invoice, and pay bills.
In conclusion, while human ingenuity and a tight team will still continue to play a significant role in helping your business cope with your current crop of problems, your business will grow and flourish if you deploy the right IT solutions to reduce information overload and make better decisions.
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