Why You Need to Invest in Your Remote Collaboration Capabilities

With businesses handling operations in different ways, their employees must adapt to the circumstances handed to them. Some companies have begun to experiment with the status quo and are for the first time realizing the value that can come from allowing staff to work remotely. We’d like to discuss some of the ways your team might rely on technology to make remote collaboration effective and how you can optimize your experience with these collaborative platforms.

The Role Technology Plays in Remote Collaboration

You’d be hard-pressed to find a business that doesn’t use IT in some way to facilitate a large portion of its day-to-day tasks. Even if it’s just one part of your operations, like managing payroll or keeping track of inventory, IT can help your business by providing value in how it streamlines these tasks. Similarly, collaboration solutions allow your business to glean value from technology by making communication more effective, especially for remote workers.

Doing the same thing day-in and day-out can be monotonous at best, and it’s likely that your team would agree. If you can take some of this burden off your employees and instead leverage technology to assist with some of the more repetitive workday tasks, you could see some benefit there. Since remote workers tend to want to get right to the task at hand, you can effectively use technology to make this goal more feasible.

What a Business Needs to Do to Get Collaborative Results from Remote Workers

There are various things your business can do to help remote workers meet their designated goals. Here are some of them:

• Provide equipment: If you want to make sure your remote workers have access to the tools they need to be successful, you can make it much easier by providing them with the equipment they need. Plus, since the equipment belongs to the company, you can install whatever you need to on it, and managing the devices becomes much easier.
• Improve communication: Communication can be aided when you build out your collaboration platforms with the remote worker in mind. If you implement tools that are specifically designed for this purpose, like VoIP and other collaborative tools, you’ll have a much easier time adjusting to the remote conditions when needed.
• Be involved: It’s extremely important for business owners and leaders to embrace the technology in use by your organization. Employees will be that much more likely to adopt the same mindset if they see their leaders doing the same.

If your organization uses remote workers, it’s critical that you find a balance between micromanagement and a more hands-off approach. Be sure that you aren’t overloading your employees with even more work in your attempts to make their daily tasks more manageable.

A Two-Step Process You Can Use to Improve Remote Team Collaboration

There might be plenty of tools out there that facilitate collaboration, but there is a difference between implementing a solution that you think might be beneficial to your team and implementing one that your team thinks might be beneficial for themselves. Due to the unique circumstances surrounding remote workers, we recommend that you involve them in the decision process early before you implement something that does the exact opposite of what you expect. To make this happen, we recommend following a two-step process:

Collaborative Vision for Product or Service Delivery

It all boils down to communication and feedback. You should work to get ideas from your employees who are actively working for your organization so you can best address issues that arise with their workflows. Ask your staff the following questions:

1. How would you describe what we are trying to accomplish?
2. What are some of the problems you see with the project as it currently stands?
3. How would your approach differ from the one laid out?

When you involve workers in the project before it starts, it gives them the confidence that their opinions matter and that you are taking them into consideration. While you will ultimately have to do what is best for the company rather than your employees, you might be surprised by how often these two initiatives align.

To get the best feedback possible, you can split your team into groups and ask them to collaborate on individual adjustments they would like to make. This makes the process of collecting feedback less time-consuming and gives your team the ability to promote perspectives that they might not necessarily consider otherwise. Identifying common issues in this way means that you can address them according to how frequently they occur.

Focus on the Problems

Armed with a list of group answers, you can go about the process of identifying problems that you need to address. You can then collaborate on how to resolve them. Remote teams might require that you use technology of some sort to bridge the gaps, like instant messaging applications or other end-to-end collaboration tools. Other integrations you might find helpful include video conferencing, file sharing, and so on.

We know it can be intimidating to implement a new technology solution, so we want you to know that we’ve got your back. Net Activity can help with each stage of the implementation process, from conception to maintenance. To learn more, reach out to us at 215-503-5150.

How Automation Can Transform Your Marketing Processes

It can be challenging for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with limited resources to get their marketing efforts off the ground. Fortunately, with marketing automation, SMBs can streamline repetitive processes and establish more cost-effective marketing campaigns. By implementing marketing automation, your company stands to gain the following benefits.

1. Automatic follow-ups

Keeping in touch over the phone can be tough if both parties are always busy, which is why email is often the medium of choice for marketing campaigns. With an automated system, your company can log the time and date of contact with leads, and set follow-up reminders for you and your team. You can even automate follow-up emails with prospects. This way, no potential customer will ever slip through the cracks.

2. Comprehensive contact histories

With each call and email you make and networking event you attend, you may obtain new contacts and leads. In the past, keeping track of these leads meant manually storing thick stacks of business cards and notes in your Rolodex. But today, cutting-edge marketing tools have made it possible to automatically capture contact information from any correspondence and record it directly onto customer relationship management databases.

Previous calls, scanned business cards, and received emails all get organized into a single database without a single minute wasted on tedious data entry. Automated systems can also track specific information on new leads, such as product preferences, contact times, and demographic information. All this information can then be used to create more personalized sales pitches that increase the likelihood of conversion.

3. Instant responses to email requests

Whenever prospective customers contact you via an email or web form, they usually expect an immediate response. Take too long to respond, and these customers can quickly lose interest in your company, ultimately costing you potential business. But if you have a marketing automation solution, you can customize automated emails to respond to these leads as soon as an email is received. These emails may include answers to frequently asked questions about your services or a simple acknowledgment that you will get back to them with an answer shortly.

4. Inbound lead assignment

Keeping track of which customer service representatives (CSRs) are handling which clients can be tricky, especially as you acquire more leads. Marketing automation software fixes this issue by automatically assigning inbound leads to the most appropriate CSRs. It could assign clients to representatives based on availability, prior experience, and specialties. This way, you can improve customer experiences by having the right people talk to the right clients.

5. Streamlined content distribution

Getting someone’s contact information is key to acquiring more leads and building relationships. The best way to achieve this is to offer relevant and valuable content that prospects actually want. For instance, you can offer webinars, how-to tutorials from your niche, or special product promotions in exchange for filling out a simple web form. When clients submit the web form with their contact information, you can then use marketing automation to deliver the content directly to their inbox.

Not only does this save you time from having to manually send out each piece of content, but it also allows you to track which pieces of content are most popular and generate the most leads. This can inform future marketing campaigns and help you focus on what’s most important to your target audience.

Wise business owners know that marketing automation is the key to saving time and unlocking their company’s competitive edge, helping them easily acquire and convert more leads. Contact us now if you want to elevate your marketing with cutting-edge automation tools.

Businesses Are Spending More On IT This Year

As a business owner or manager, you know how important good IT is. Your business couldn’t function without it.

Your IT isn’t just about computers and data. It’s everything from your phone system to your printers, to where you access your documents.

And that’s without going into the measures you must take to keep your data and infrastructure safe and secure from cybercriminals.

So, we weren’t surprised by a new forecast from IT research and consultancy firm, Gartner, which predicts businesses will spend more on technology this year.

In fact, the global IT spend could reach an enormous $4.4 trillion. That’s despite rising inflation, the Russian invasion, and shortages in both chips and IT talent.

We believe there’s been a fundamental shift in the way businesses view their technology.

Two years ago, at the beginning of the pandemic, companies were forced to take unexpected urgent action to help employees work from home. In many cases that meant a large investment in devices, rapid changes to systems, and the adoption of new technology.

And it’s worked out well for most. Businesses have adapted quickly, and many have embraced the changes on a more permanent basis.

But it’s also made business leaders realize they need to be better prepared to respond to future potential disruption.

This is the difference between a flexible and agile business… and one that stumbles at the first hurdle.

Many businesses no longer see IT as a cost. They embrace it as an investment. They can see the direct correlation between creating robust, safe, and flexible systems – and their teams’ abilities to achieve more.

Owners and managers are also placing more value on excellent, proactive technology support from a trusted partner.

To not only plan and execute big development projects. But also, to help reduce downtime and ensure systems are secure and running as they should be.

If you’re reviewing your spend on technology and support, we can help. Get in touch.