5 Pieces Of Technology To Help Streamline Business Operating Costs

Running a business isn’t cheap, and if you’re struggling to balance efficiency with cost, you’re not alone. The key to taking a business to the next level is often finding a way to make sure your business is running as smoothly and efficiently as possible without breaking the bank.
Thankfully, tech advancements in the last few decades have made this easier than ever. Whatever line of work you’re in and however ‘techy’ you consider yourself, there is a great innovation out there to help streamline your business’ operating costs.

Fuel card networks

Operating a huge fleet of vehicles is an expensive business to run.
Once you’ve made sure your vehicles follow legal standards, drivers feel comfortable on the job and routes are as efficiently planned as possible you need to focus on one of the most costly essentials, fuel. Not only is fuel a significant expense on the end of your budget every month, but the process of sifting through piles of receipts from every driver in your fleet takes your admin team away from other key tasks. Fuel cards have emerged as a brilliant way of getting around this issue. Working as part of an interconnected network, whenever your driver pays with a fuel card rather than a traditional credit card or cash the cost will be charged to one single account. This isn’t just occasionally cheaper and more efficient for the driver but streamlines the process for your admin and accounts team. German readers can learn more about the shell tankkarten from iCompario and how it can help streamline their fleets.

Cloud storage

The modern office has no use for filing cabinets.
Every month employees across the country lose hours trying to find the right document. Sticking to the traditional model or forcing someone to go to another floor just to check a file on someone’s machine isn’t unique, quirky or traditional, it’s poor time management and a lack of financial foresight.

Cloud storage technology is one of the most revolutionary innovations in the world of business for years. It’s allowed companies of all sizes across all sectors to collaborate across teams, share important documents and find the right information in a cheap and efficient way. For an initial investment you can not just store all of your most important documents virtually, but be assured they’re safely secured.
Companies still keeping client agreements under lock and key in a filing cabinet need to get a grip on reality. Not just for their employee’s nerves, but their bank balance.

Social media management tools

Social media is a crucial piece of the business puzzle in the 21st century.

You don’t need to be an Instagram influencer with millions of followers to get something out of social media. These platforms are a great way to communicate with your audience, research their habits and draw attention to new products, services and campaigns.

However, if you’re running a large scale social media operation and you’re not careful, you can find yourself eating into your time and profits.

This is why most social media teams will use management tools such as Hootsuite. These tools allow you to control all of your social media platforms from one collated space, meaning you can schedule posts on mass and ensure consistency in your content and tone. No more time wasted scheduling a month’s worth of content on Facebook, only to have to log onto Twitter and do it all again.

If you’re serious about using the platforms available to you, it’s essential you maximize the use of tools designed to make it as streamlined a process as possible.

Video chats

Not just a great way to catch up with your grandparents under lock down, video conferencing technology has immense wealth in the real world.

Think about how much you spend on travel every year. If you have a lot of international clients or business partners you can end up spending a fortune on going to meet them in person. While helpful, these meetings are rarely essential or worth the money. Video chat technology gives you the opportunity to catch up with people face to face, removing significant travel costs. Even cutting these yearly meetings by half will save you money and give you more time in the office.

Lock down has also shown that people can work from home quite efficiently if given the right tools and environment. With office spaces getting more expensive and businesses’ attempts to grow stifled by the number of desks that can fit within 4 white walls, embracing the concept of remote working on a permanent basis could help businesses save a significant amount of money.

Video chats make it easy for remote workers to keep up with what’s going on in the office, reporting in every day, screen sharing to display work and dropping into quick meetings to stay in the loop.

If you allow staff to work from home even once or twice a week on a rotating basis, you can hire more staff and significantly reduce your in-office expenses. Fewer people meals fewer amenities to provide, and with people desk sharing you can hold off on that office upgrade for a little while.

Chatbots

In this interconnected world we all live in, where reputations can be flipped very easily, every business needs to build strong relationships with its audience.

Customer service is more important than ever and takes many forms. One customer becoming infuriated by a perceived lack of interest from your staff can give your business a bad reputation.

However, assigning a team to just handling customer service queries can be costly and inefficient, especially if you’re a larger business dealing with many of the same questions every day.

That’s where chatbots come in. A technology that has been around for a while now, chatbots have become significantly more sophisticated in the last few years, with AI advancements allowing them to analyze customer issues and guide them through the processes of your website.

A human touch is nice when it comes to customer service, but sometimes a machine can do an equally good job. Plus, they’re not going to get tired when they hear the same complaint a hundred times in a row.

Despite the initial investment costs, tech solutions are a great way to improve the processes and cost of your business while bringing it into the 21st century.