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Written by: Agatha Singer
Implementing technology for business optimization can save you money by boosting productivity as well as protecting you from top cybersecurity threats. Today you can use a variety of solutions to improve various aspects of your company. Sometimes this will require a considerable investment, but long-term benefits make it absolutely worth it, especially considering the impact of cybersecurity on business.
However, as many small businesses cannot afford to start a major tech upgrade campaign, you should evaluate your options very carefully. By prioritizing the efficiency of solutions for your business you’ll be able to achieve maximum efficiency one investment at a time.
3 Ideas on Implementing Technology for Business Productivity and Efficiency
1. Automate online marketing
Automating your online marketing campaigns to the maximum will allow you to both enhance their efficiency and save time that you will otherwise spend performing all the updates and other repetitive tasks by hand. You save money because you get to use that free time for developing your business further. However, you can also save on the services of a digital marketing agency. As you won’t need to hire one to run your promotion completely, you can simply acquire content from freelancers and your marketing automation tools will ensure it’s spread across all your online channels.
Online marketing automation tools of today are versatile and can meet the needs of any business. Some of them, like Marketo, combine essential features like lead generation, email marketing, search marketing, website traffic tracking, web personalization, and ROI measurement and optimization. However, that solution is expensive. More affordable versatile tools include Aritic, Customer.io, and HubSpot.
2. Move to a better hosting
Now is the time when providing top-quality customer experience is a must, and one of the best ways to do this is moving to a different hosting. Finding the best servers for your website will ensure its top performance, which means no crashing and high loading speeds. Both are essential for a business website, especially if you are dealing in e-commerce, as 3+ seconds of waiting will lose you over 40% of customers by default, says KISSmetrics.
The good news here is that you can often get high-quality servers with cheap business hosting. You just need to look for top companies that offer cheap sign-up deals. These prices will grow a bit when you need to renew your contract. However, by that time you should be able to afford it.
3. Go paperless
Implementing technology for business optimization means embracing it on every level, so analogue tools like paper need to go. Going paperless will not only boost your business efficiency and save you money, but also help preserve what few forests the planet still has. Using cloud technology and various specialized solutions to manage everything from accounting records to inventory online will also allow you to hire freelancers who will help run your business remotely. Hence, another way to cut your costs.
By keeping all your employees connected and all your records updated in real time you’ll be able to boost overall business efficiency and reduce mistakes. This will definitely endear you to your customers. There is a solution for any business task today, so take your time researching software. You should start with developers that offer comprehensive collections of business tools, like Zoho.
Preparing Your Business to Fight Top Cybersecurity Threats
The cybersecurity impact on business is tremendous today. According to recent data, on average small businesses lose about $80,000 a year to cybercrime.
Therefore, one thing you definitely cannot skimp on is your security. This matter is even more pressing for e-commerce businesses, which deal with sensitive private data and banking information. All companies that have access to such data are at a greater risk of hacker attacks. Should this happen to you, the reputation of your company will be ruined and you might never recover from such a blow.
Top cybersecurity threats you’ll need to watch out for are:
- Phishing attacks
- Ransomware attacks
- Direct attacks on your business website (extreme threat because not only will you suffer from whatever the attackers do but your website will also be penalized by Google)
Note that there are also some tech parts of your business that are more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Therefore, they require additional layers of protection. Those are your cloud storage, any Internet-of-Things solutions used in your office, and private electronic devices used by your employees in the office and connected to your network. There have also been multiple cases of attackers hacking into personal social media accounts of employees to steal their credentials, which are later used to access the company.
When implementing technology for business, you’ll need to plan your budget in a way that will allow installing the best available cybersecurity solutions first. You also need to plan so you can update them every couple of months in order to stay as well-protected as possible. Considering the immensity of the cybersecurity impact on business, this must always be your priority.
The solutions available now are rather complex and you’ll need to have a few of them to build a multi-layered digital defense for your business. This is where consulting a professional pays off as you need to make your business as protected as possible. Some of the good security solutions include Risk Vision, Log360, Namogoo, and Teramid.
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Author Bio: I’m Agatha Singer, a work-from-home mom of two little nuggets. My interests range from the latest business management trends to healthy living and adventurous traveling. I always stay open to new ideas and expertise to make my writings handy and captivating for you. I'll be happy to see you on my blog: http://www.agsinger.com/!