Bevlin Blog

Bevlin has been serving the Boston area since 2006, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Are You Leveraging these Invaluable Business Tools?

Technology has enabled businesses to do more with less, although this isn’t always the best thing. Many small businesses simply feel that they don’t have the technology solutions that properly resolve their challenges. However, these solutions exist, and offer all the robust functionality that many businesses seek.

Here, we’ll commit some time to examining the enterprise-level technology that SMBs are now leveraging to encourage their business’ forward momentum, and how you can leverage a solution that may not initially seem to be a fit.

The first consideration that any small business decision maker needs to take is how connected people are today. This level of connectivity produces many things, perhaps most of all heightened expectations - a fact that any SMB needs to contend with.

Historically, a small business would never invest in solutions meant to improve the customer’s experience and relationship with the company - they just didn’t have to. However, consumer demand makes it so that investing heavily in software can bring opportunities that simply wouldn’t be there otherwise.

As a result, your SMB needs to have the following solutions in its arsenal:

Customer Relationship Management

It can almost be said that, if your business doesn’t use a CRM, you aren’t really in business. That’s how crucial a CRM system can be nowadays. With hundreds of options out there, there are those that are unquestionably meant for the enterprise user, as well as plenty of options dedicated to a particular industry’s needs. These particular solutions take the benefits of the CRM and integrate different options that are precisely suited to a specific industry vertical.

One of the biggest small-business benefits of a CRM has to be how it can automate a significant amount of tasks that once were handled by multiple employees - a relatively larger chunk of its workforce (and payroll) than a larger competitor would be concerned with. This makes the CRM that much more valuable to a small business, as it reduces the manpower needed to complete business-critical tasks through automation. By integrating your customer relationships with your scheduling, your payroll, and other concerns, a CRM helps to make your business and its operations more streamlined.

Supply Chain Management

The demands of the customer are more crucial than ever to meet, especially for today’s smaller manufacturer. This means that the supply chain (procurement, manufacturing, fulfillment, and distribution) needs to smoothly work in coordination with its different parts. This is made easier by leveraging a single Supply Chain Management platform. Some of the options that these platforms often include, like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, are the same that are found in a CRM. This makes it easier to combine and consolidate software solutions so that users have that much less to learn to keep business moving.

Marketing Automation

Much like was said regarding the CRM, today’s small business doesn’t really exist without some kind of online presence. Some businesses will have an entire website created, while some stick to social media profiles. If you’re looking to boost your own business’ revenue generation (and why wouldn’t you be), building up your online presence is both an affordable and an effective means of doing so. Pairing this presence with automated systems can help you to nurture leads while simultaneously speeding up business and reducing operational costs.

This is how it works: your website captures leads. Once you have these leads, your marketing automation solution takes your captured information and integrates it with the CRM - saving you from the considerable task of doing it yourself. The end result, more worthwhile conversations that ideally end in more closed sales.

With the tools that are available today, it is amazing that more businesses aren’t leveraging them to cut costs and accomplish more. Don’t you want to get out ahead? The IT professionals at Bevlin can help by deploying the ones that fit your business’ operations. For more information, call us at 781-679-0172.

 

Comments 1

Buy instagramfollowers on Sunday, 30 June 2019 11:26

For HR, the struggle is in mining the right data. By the year 2020, 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created for each person on the planet every single second. To stay competitive and move your organisation forward, you’ll need the tools to identify and utilise your most important data.
However, it’s no good having and analysing valuable employee data if it isn’t used to drive future success. Here are a few of the most important ways that you can leverage your data for the benefit of your business.

1. Discover and improve engagement drivers
Employee engagement is the holy grail of people management for several reasons. It helps with staff retention, improves company morale, makes employees more productive – and can lead to greater profitability for your business.

A recent Gallup report on engagement suggested 12 simple questions that could be used to gauge engagement. The data you get from surveys and questionnaires are a great indicator of what drives employees, paving the way for HR to adopt strategies that can further create engagement.

2. Put the power in employees’ hands
Workforce management tools now offer real-time mobile access for employees that can help to boost morale in several ways. Payroll and time management can be automated, leading to fewer errors in pay and benefits.

Workers can also access their development and goal management plans, get 360 feedback from their working circles and access performance reviews or surveys. This all helps the employee experience. It also makes it easy for employees and managers to access employee performance data and break it down into relevant charts or accessible information.

Plus, workforce management tools benefit an organisation by cutting admin costs. They also give HR leaders the capability to access invaluable real-time data, compare individual and team performance against a budget, calculate ROI and measure how successful the implementation of a plan has been in real terms.

3. Identify and cultivate future leaders
The data from people management offers plenty of insights about your talent pool, but it needs to be tempered with traditional HR insights. HR can now implement business strategies based on statistical evidence and data insights. This is vital when future planning or cultivating talent management strategies. Succession planning should be every organisation’s number one priority, according to Forbes, but it found that only 14 percent of directors had a detailed succession plan in place.

Established KPIs should be used to judge the productivity of your employees and identify potential leaders among your workforce. People analytics can also be used to improve your recruitment processes and qualify successful hires or identify hires who are retention risks.

You can also carry out assessments, surveys, tests and performance reviews to further judge candidates’ suitability. Real-time analytics makes it easier to track progress and identify any areas where further training is required and to work together on ongoing, data-driven development plans.

4. Have the right people in the right place
Predictive data analytics now allows employers to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Demand-based rostering makes it easy to calculate how many workers they’ll need based on data analysis of staff competencies, historical trends, seasonal factors and past customer behaviour.

Not only does this avoid costly over-staffing on any given day but it also ensures that retail businesses or service providers won’t lose any business due to under-staffing. This form of data analytics keeps costs down and maximises profits by using forecasting models to predict outcomes.

Demand-based rostering can also cut out just-in-time scheduling of workers, which can leave businesses open to working shift breaches and compliance issues. One major retailer cut overtime bills by 92 percent with CoreHR software. The accuracy of this system allows organisations to properly plan budgets and accurately access wage and project costs.

5. Leverage external data
It’s no longer enough to look inward for your HR answers, especially when it comes to recruitment. There’s a growing trend in HR of harnessing and integrating external data from social media and other public platforms. This can help to attract star performers with outreach efforts and improve the standard of your hires.

“Today’s forward-thinking HR organisations are well aware of the treasure trove of data available through outside sources – such as social networks – that can help monitor and build employment brand, identify and recruit talent, better understand compensation strategies, recognise flight risk, and monitor employee satisfaction and engagement,” according to a recent Deloitte report.

HR technologies are now moving towards predictive algorithms and technologies, with cognitive technologies such as AI and self-learning technologies forming the next wave of analytics tools. This type of analytics represents the future of talent acquisition (TA).

“Predictive analytics is increasingly important to TA, as sophisticated analytics teams begin to prioritise recruiting workflows, conduct workforce planning, evaluate different recruiting sources, assess quality of hire, and use pre-hire assessments,” says the latest Deloitte Human Capital Trends report, which adds, “companies that are not prioritising analytics do so at their own risk.”

Knowing how to leverage the relevant data is vital, but preparing for the future is just as important. Constantly updating your systems and staying ahead of the trends will allow you to keep accessing invaluable data that can be leveraged for organisational success.

Falling behind in this competitive world of analytics is like trying to pan gold with your bare hands. Without the right tools, you’re going to struggle to add value to your business. epicfollowers

For HR, the struggle is in mining the right data. By the year 2020, 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created for each person on the planet every single second. To stay competitive and move your organisation forward, you’ll need the tools to identify and utilise your most important data. However, it’s no good having and analysing valuable employee data if it isn’t used to drive future success. Here are a few of the most important ways that you can leverage your data for the benefit of your business. 1. Discover and improve engagement drivers Employee engagement is the holy grail of people management for several reasons. It helps with staff retention, improves company morale, makes employees more productive – and can lead to greater profitability for your business. A recent Gallup report on engagement suggested 12 simple questions that could be used to gauge engagement. The data you get from surveys and questionnaires are a great indicator of what drives employees, paving the way for HR to adopt strategies that can further create engagement. 2. Put the power in employees’ hands Workforce management tools now offer real-time mobile access for employees that can help to boost morale in several ways. Payroll and time management can be automated, leading to fewer errors in pay and benefits. Workers can also access their development and goal management plans, get 360 feedback from their working circles and access performance reviews or surveys. This all helps the employee experience. It also makes it easy for employees and managers to access employee performance data and break it down into relevant charts or accessible information. Plus, workforce management tools benefit an organisation by cutting admin costs. They also give HR leaders the capability to access invaluable real-time data, compare individual and team performance against a budget, calculate ROI and measure how successful the implementation of a plan has been in real terms. 3. Identify and cultivate future leaders The data from people management offers plenty of insights about your talent pool, but it needs to be tempered with traditional HR insights. HR can now implement business strategies based on statistical evidence and data insights. This is vital when future planning or cultivating talent management strategies. Succession planning should be every organisation’s number one priority, according to Forbes, but it found that only 14 percent of directors had a detailed succession plan in place. Established KPIs should be used to judge the productivity of your employees and identify potential leaders among your workforce. People analytics can also be used to improve your recruitment processes and qualify successful hires or identify hires who are retention risks. You can also carry out assessments, surveys, tests and performance reviews to further judge candidates’ suitability. Real-time analytics makes it easier to track progress and identify any areas where further training is required and to work together on ongoing, data-driven development plans. 4. Have the right people in the right place Predictive data analytics now allows employers to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Demand-based rostering makes it easy to calculate how many workers they’ll need based on data analysis of staff competencies, historical trends, seasonal factors and past customer behaviour. Not only does this avoid costly over-staffing on any given day but it also ensures that retail businesses or service providers won’t lose any business due to under-staffing. This form of data analytics keeps costs down and maximises profits by using forecasting models to predict outcomes. Demand-based rostering can also cut out just-in-time scheduling of workers, which can leave businesses open to working shift breaches and compliance issues. One major retailer cut overtime bills by 92 percent with CoreHR software. The accuracy of this system allows organisations to properly plan budgets and accurately access wage and project costs. 5. Leverage external data It’s no longer enough to look inward for your HR answers, especially when it comes to recruitment. There’s a growing trend in HR of harnessing and integrating external data from social media and other public platforms. This can help to attract star performers with outreach efforts and improve the standard of your hires. “Today’s forward-thinking HR organisations are well aware of the treasure trove of data available through outside sources – such as social networks – that can help monitor and build employment brand, identify and recruit talent, better understand compensation strategies, recognise flight risk, and monitor employee satisfaction and engagement,” according to a recent Deloitte report. HR technologies are now moving towards predictive algorithms and technologies, with cognitive technologies such as AI and self-learning technologies forming the next wave of analytics tools. This type of analytics represents the future of talent acquisition (TA). “Predictive analytics is increasingly important to TA, as sophisticated analytics teams begin to prioritise recruiting workflows, conduct workforce planning, evaluate different recruiting sources, assess quality of hire, and use pre-hire assessments,” says the latest Deloitte Human Capital Trends report, which adds, “companies that are not prioritising analytics do so at their own risk.” Knowing how to leverage the relevant data is vital, but preparing for the future is just as important. Constantly updating your systems and staying ahead of the trends will allow you to keep accessing invaluable data that can be leveraged for organisational success. Falling behind in this competitive world of analytics is like trying to pan gold with your bare hands. Without the right tools, you’re going to struggle to add value to your business. [url=http://epicfollowers.co.uk/]epicfollowers[/url]
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