Strategic Use of Technology

Building new technology into the scheme of a company is an invaluable way to increase profits in almost any industry. There are numerous ways to incorporate technology, and not every new development should be accepted and applied blindly. The following comprise a few techniques for employing technology strategically in order to increase profits.

• Use the Internet to make a global reach. The Internet is a tool to make the presence of the company felt, and its also a vial resource for marketing, customer support and collaboration.

• Utilize WebEx for demos and presentations.

• Only use proven technology. Dont invest in all the latest gizmos and software. If you are too soon in the process, you may invest poorly and get burned. Let others try and prove it. This is simply not a risk that you need to take.

• Dont insist on a 100% solution when technology is used in the process. If they are not essential, they should not have been there in the first place. What often happens is that in good times managers sometimes loosen the reins and allow some costs to be incurred in areas that are non-essential. It is easy to allow this to happen. However, once the company becomes accustomed to certain costs, it quickly becomes the acceptable norm. It is a very difficult thing to cut costs once they have become a part of the acceptable norm. Therefore as a general rule, only allow those costs with which you are comfortable now and in the future, even when there may be a slight downturn in the business, which always happens. Efficient technology can only provide an 80% solution. Trying to get a 100% solution for all your requirements will cost too much, and is probably not worth it.

• Use Internet-based conferencing solutions such as Placeware. This is an excellent way to reduce rising travel cost, and is also a great time saver.

• Ultimus makes Business Process Management software. We are gluttons for eating our own dog food. We use our software to automate our own business processes so we can eliminate human tasks as much as possible. Some examples of processes that we have automated internally are processing handling web leads/registration, obtaining customer ideas for product improvement, providing customer support and processing customer orders, employee performance reviews and purchase request authorizations.