Your business is becoming an on demand business which means it needs the right technology to scale on demand.
Your business can't rely on a physical location any longer—customers are looking online for products and services now more than ever. Hence, it would be best if you adapted your business to fit your customers' evolving needs. The first step is establishing an online presence for your business by creating a website or a profile on an existing eCommerce website. You must implement some form of eCommerce so customers can purchase your products or contact sales online. Consumers want to do business with you, but it's on you to make that possible.
Although these additions mean more work for you and your employees, the outcome is well worth it. Moving your business online and adapting to customer needs opens the door to a massive untapped consumer-base. Customers from anywhere in the world will be able to do business with you, potentially leading to growth that you would have otherwise never experienced. Even if you don't think your business has a place online, it just takes a bit of creativity to make it work.
Setting up an eCommerce capable website or using an existing eCommerce platform is inexpensive and doesn't require technical support. Additionally, an online presence can benefit your business years down the road, regardless of whether your physical office or store has opened back up.
Businesses across the country have pivoted their products and services to fit the changing needs of customers new and old, but how do you pivot your business? Before anything else, you need to look at your own business and examine three aspects of it to determine where and how you can pivot.
First, look at your business's value proposition and identify what value you deliver with your products or services. Is there a way that you can create new value with an existing offering? Such as a fabric store pivoting to selling their fabric to mask manufacturers. Next, look at your business's value network and how you deliver and monetize your offering.
Could you find new ways to deliver your product, such as moving online? Could you repurpose assets to create new products? For instance, Ford began manufacturing ventilators with existing equipment, or distilleries began making hand sanitizer out of a byproduct of the distillation. Finally, look at your target market and customers. Is there anyone else that could use your products? It can even be as easy as repositioning your offering with existing customers.
Pivoting is a fantastic way to maintain your business right now, expand and do business with customers in markets you never had a relationship with before.
Moving your business online and pivoting existing products or services can increase sales, open up new target markets and grow your business in unexpected ways, but with new opportunities come new challenges. Whether you have an on-prem communications provider or use your phone, you won't be able to communicate with customers if they are across the world properly. To capture these opportunities you must upgrade your existing communication solution to one that can work whether you are communicating with customers in the next state over, or across the globe.
A fully-featured, unified communications solution gives you and your employees the capabilities that you need to interact with customers from anywhere in the world. With calling, messaging and video conferencing, you can communicate with customers through multiple channels on your phone, tablet or computer from anywhere. Additionally, it can provide you with features that extend beyond communicating internally or with customers—a robust cloud communication solution gives you and your employees valuable features such as business continuity and eliminates the need for technical upkeep.
Cloud unified communications software is scalable and ensures that you are paying for what you need at the moment, rather than paying for what you might need in the future. A unified communications solution is inexpensive, feature-rich, and flexible; it's built to provide value in as many ways as possible, not stick you in a corner and wring your pockets dry.
There are many ways to grow your business, but whether you move online, pivot or find a new creative way to thrive, you won't be able to increase your revenue unless your business is prepared to grow. One aspect of your business that will be an anchor and prevent growth is the small, time-consuming processes that all companies have to deal with. Payroll, billing or sending out emails and texts can take up lots of time for employees and reduce your business efficiency. The more it grows, the more time these processes will take up and the more money you'll need to spend on them.
The best way to deal with this is by automating those processes to scale with your business instantly. Using API's to automatically generate notifications, texts, emails or even automated billing are easy, cheap ways your business can improve its efficiency and make it easier to scale.
If you have the technical ability to set them up, implementing these changes can be incredibly low cost. If you are unable to yourself, many services provide these capabilities inexpensively. Look at your business and the processes that exist within each branch, if you can identify a few places that you can automate, you will be saving yourself time and money wasted in the future trying to deal with it.
Your business can grow by capturing new customers and expanding into new markets, but many unknowns come with these opportunities. One way to mitigate these risks is by hiring employees that have experience scaling and growing a company. Luckily, most, if not all, hiring right now is happening remotely, so just like your customers, the talent pool is virtually limitless.
You might be tempted to hire locally, but you need to look outside your immediate area to take full advantage of the situation. There are professionals from around the world looking for work, many with extensive experience in critical areas of your business.
Additionally, the move to remote work will continue to a greater extent than before, so even in the coming years, your remote employees will continue to be valuable additions to your business. Not to mention, international remote workers can provide information about customer needs and be a fantastic ear to the ground for markets that you may never have entered.
Remote employees are an excellent addition to many businesses, and right now is the best time to go out and hire remote workers, locally and internationally.
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