Posts tagged Business

Honestly I can say I am a geek when it comes to technology. I love the latest inventions of anything that is electronic. Whether it is the iPhone, Blackberry or some new laptop that innovates the industry, I love to try it out.

However as a business owner it is more than just having the latest tech items. You must be able to use those items so that the return on your investment for that item is warranted. In other words, you wouldn`t spend five thousand dollars on a computer if it did not in some way make your business run smoother, faster and/or more efficient. That would make it a waste of money.

In this article, with the help of the Counselors to America`s small businesses, or better known as S.C.O.R.E, I want to give you 5 helpful tips for when you implement technology into your business.

Plan, plan, plan. This is true in area of life, and especially true when you are integrating technology into a business. You must have a plan. Just like you would have a business plan or marketing plan, you should also have a technology plan. This plan should outline what kind of technology you are going to implement, its purpose, cost, a strategy as to when you will upgrade it, who will maintain it and so on. Your technology plan, like all other plans, should fully detail the who, what, when, where, and why questions.

Design your goals. In the design of your plan make sure you outline the goals you want this new technology to achieve. For our business we implemented the latest version of the MySQL database. Our goal was to use the new version for faster response time and a more efficient means of the database design. Your design of your plan must end up with you reaching the goal for its intended purpose.

Investment. As SCORE puts it, you want to think of technology as investment into your business. The technology you implement should help your business run more efficient, faster, more cost affective and so on. A friend of mine runs a home repair business. Recently he purchased a customer tracking and invoicing piece of software. His plan was to make sure he could track all of his customers, their needs, and subsequent invoices for jobs with a few mouse clicks or little typing. That piece of software helped speed up the tedious task of office work which was dragging him down. Therefore his investment into that software was worth it.

Solve those problems. You can start by defining what problems your company or business faces. Then define how technology will help solve those problems. In our example above, the problem was the amount of time wasted by organizing paperwork, doing invoices by hand and so on. The new software implemented, solved that problem.

Seek the experts. Last but certainly not least, however last for a reason, seek the advice of technology experts. Although you may love the new tech gadgets, software and devices, you may not have all the answers to your needs. If you know what your problems are, but aren`t sure how to solve them with technology, talk to someone in the technology field who is an expert. You can always look in the yellow pages for computer and software professionals. You may not know that a piece of software exists for what you need, but they sure do. Just keep in mind, as with all partnering, and that is basically what you are doing here, good partners will accelerate success, while bad ones will accelerate failure. Do your homework on the expert. Make sure they do have the experience of what they are talking about and have your best interest at heart and not their own.

Technology is a beautiful thing. When implemented properly it will help your business tremendously.