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The Flevy Blog covers Business Strategies, Business Theories, & Business Stories.
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Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Digital Transformation Strategy (145-slide PowerPoint presentation). Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations across most industries, as the role of technology shifts from being a business enabler to a business driver. This has only been accelerated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Thus, to remain competitive and outcompete in today's fast paced, [read more]
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Tech has and is continuing to change the way business is done across all industries, but it isn’t enough for businesses to rely on widespread technological utilizations to assist them in their daily tasks. Businesses need to actively search for new technology that improves their KPIs, treating tech as they would any other investment to ensure they are gaining the highest return for their business. Tech has a lot of potential in business, and many leaders leverage technology in the following ways to promote their business growth, but keep in mind that not any old technology will do – you need to look at all new tech with a critical eye and try not to get sold on a new product simply because it is new.
How Can Technology Promote Business Growth?
Technology isn’t just for the essential day-to-day tasks that you need to conduct, and it can be properly leveraged to contribute to the growth of your business – either by cutting costs in areas that allow you to redirect funding towards growth or by facilitating the acquisition of a new business. When you have the right pieces of technology on your side, you can adapt to a changing business landscape, produce better customer service, and cut your variable costs down to the bone. There are several additional benefits:
Increased Agility
Organizational agility is not a common term, but it relates to a business or organization’s ability to respond to both emerging trends and changes in market conditions rapidly. When you can adapt with high agility, you can outperform competition; the logic is identical to Darwin; the strongest do not survive, but those best adapted to their environment. Research from MIT found that agile businesses grow their revenue almost 40% faster than non-agile businesses, generating about 30% more profits than their less agile counterparts.
Higher Productivity Rates
Even office standard equipment can have a big impact on productivity rates. 3 out of 4 employees in America believe that their employers do not give them access to the best technology they need to do their jobs efficiently. This is a fundamental business error, as technology is a driving force of productivity.
The difference between having a quick and responsive all in one pc compared to a slow and faulty laptop could be adding up to hours of lost work per week. One only needs to see how much time the protagonists of Office Space take up trying to understand their printer to be convinced that clunky, hard to use technology can seriously damage productivity.
Maximize Efficacy
Tech is such a driver for business growth for the same reason as it was during the industrial revolution – it allows business owners to maximize the efficiency of their employees. Tech can be used to make business processes simpler and easier to complete; in doing so, it can take the strain off workers in creative ways, like how AI chatbots revolutionized customer service and allowed staff to spend more time on cognitively demanding tasks (which tend to be the ones that lead to business growth).
Improved Decision Making
Another way that tech is invaluable to business is in improved decision making. Decision making a key part of management in any business – data can take some of the risks out of making decisions; it allows you to understand more of everything from market insights to customer behavior. That means that you can make informed decisions with fewer risks, improving the odds of your decisions contributing to your business’s growth.
You can download in-depth presentations on Digital Transformation and 100s of management topics from the FlevyPro Library. FlevyPro is trusted and utilized by 1000s of management consultants and corporate executives.
For even more best practices available on Flevy, have a look at our top 100 lists:
These best practices are of the same as those leveraged by top-tier management consulting firms, like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and Accenture. Improve the growth and efficiency of your organization by utilizing these best practice frameworks, templates, and tools. Most were developed by seasoned executives and consultants with over 20+ years of experience.
