2023 is promising to be a unique year, in more ways than the two previous ones. With global occurrences and trends shifting on a daily basis, it is only to be expected that businesses must adapt fast in order to be able to not only cash in, but also cope.
Here are some ideas on what you can do to grow your business in 2022.
Be More Agile
Agility has been a hot topic for some time, specifically since startups started imposing new rules. Improving an organization’s agility is a complex undertaking, but it’s also rewarding in its own ways.
According to Sidepost, business agility is the ability of a company to compete in the digital age by quickly responding to any and all market changes with innovative business solutions.
A special spot is reserved for emerging opportunities that may be difficult to pinpoint. Hence, it is crucial to have a team charged with recognizing emerging trends and jumping on the bandwagon ASAP. If your team cannot be reached spontaneously, integrate automation, which works almost undisturbedly thanks to supervised learning and data training.
For it to be successful, business agility must include everyone within a business. Joint cooperation should lead to delivering sustainable solutions that encompass all standpoints and roles, including marketing, finance, IT operations, development, compliance, security, legal and support.
It is not an easy feat by any means, so establishing proper business procedures with the aim of delivering innovative, high-quality products/services faster than the competition may be the optimal starting point.
Provide your employees with mentors
The World Economic Forum conducted a study to determine how prepared employees are for the future of work. Their findings were startling: on average, 50% of your employees will need reskilling by 2025. The message is clear that existing employee skills need to be reinforced continually, while also learning entirely new skills. As individuals, we need to keep growing just to keep up, let alone thrive.
This can be disheartening; how can we accelerate the training of our employees? Do you need to dump tons of resources into the latest training software development? No. A better way is to tap into the existing knowledge in your company. With an internal employee mentorship program, you can connect more junior employees with seasoned leaders.
By finding the right mentor for each employee, you can put them on the fast track to meaningful growth. And there are plenty of mentoring platforms that make it easy to match mentors and mentees automatically, without spending hours manually matching them.
So consider how you can begin connecting employees together for mentoring relationships. It might just lead accelerate your employees’ learning and development.
Hire More Integrators
To be able to do this, you’ll need to ensure that all departments and processes are being properly integrated and diversified, with all aspects of each respective role being taken into account.
How do you do this?
You find the right integrator.
The optimal candidate should possess the right combination of skills and personal traits, the most important of which we’ll present below.
First of all, a stellar integrator must be able to think strategically and possess appropriate leadership skills.
The first is essential for enhancing business dynamics and managing key procedures with an aim of transforming the initiatives into tangible results.
The latter is crucial for getting the best out of your teams. The ability to grow a team is as important as the ability to manage it, so look for a person capable of a positive mindset that can lead by example.
Next on, the finest of integrators are graced with a mild disposition and a couple of specific personality traits, including reliability, sense of responsibility, adaptability, flexibility, problem-solving skills, a winning mindset and a high achiever mindset.
As far as experience goes, prospective hires need to be able to demonstrate that they are capable of bringing a new experience to the business and deep understanding of business dynamics and procedures.
Last but not least, you should make sure that the integrator possesses the skills compatible with your industry and shares a similar vision and values to your company.
If all of the above criteria are met, your integrator will be able to offer a new perspective, bring forth new ideas, and promote a positive challenge that will lead to gaps and mistakes being dealt with efficiently.
Focus on Your Frontline Employees
Businesses employing frontline employees may need to go a step further to ensure innovation and agility are taking place simply because frontline jobs are complex in their nature.
You may start by simplifying manual procedures at the very least and pick the best apps and tools for optimizing project management to help you with common tasks (e.g., download timesheet template, use an app to track employee hours, etc.). It is also important to provide your employees with the best customer portal software so they can easily manage communication with clients and solve their issues.
Further out, you should make sure you’re up to date with field service management trends, which will enable your frontline team to adapt faster to any forthcoming changes.
Here are some current trends:
- Artificial intelligence startup ideas for business automation
- AI solutions for recruitment
- Expense management apps
- Inventory management software for supply chains
- Internet of Things (IoT) for asset management
- Contract management software to automate the entire contract process
- Cloud-based software for remote work
Last but not least, use field management software to enable managers to track business processes in real-time and address any potential issue that may arise in a timely manner.
There are many field measurement tools. Some of them deal with task checklists, others deal with online invoices, OCR invoice extraction, on-site card payments, price estimation services, OHS checklists and JSAs, and photo recording and uploading.
Here are some ideas on which apps to consider:
- Project bidding apps
- Construction project management apps
- Construction time tracking apps
- Interior and exterior visual data apps
- Construction safety apps
- Accounting apps
- Tool tracking apps
- Fleet tracking apps
- Employee engagement apps
Furthermore, employees must take care of their health and well-being on their own, otherwise, you won’t get the best out of them. Ensure the tools mentioned above will ease their workload so they can spend time with their families and themselves. Ask them if they feel productive in one-on-one sessions regularly, or once a month. Ask them if they living a healthy lifestyle or not. Do they sleep well or not? Etc… It will boost their morale, which will ultimately help them perform at their best.
Remember Your Website Is the Face of Your Business
Finally, the era of digitalization is merciless in terms of competition. Nowadays, if something isn’t announced online, it doesn’t happen.
Keeping this in mind, you should absolutely make certain that your website is the face of your business. Then, improve your website accessibility. You should brainstorm its concept and hire the right people who know perfectly well what they are doing and how to hit the goals.
Start by unraveling the undying Webflow vs. WordPress conundrum, which, depending on who you ask, actually may not have a simple answer.
It is essential to have a stellar SEO team and even more stellar content production team because only updated, relevant sites that cross-promote content on social media can hope to become experts in the field and maintain a stable client base. When it comes to SEO, businesses should also focus on link building, as it is a great way to boost brand visibility and credibility. If you are a SaaS business, consider working with an experienced SaaS link building agency that can provide useful tips on how to run effective link building campaigns.
Basically, you’ll need a lot of people to streamline their activities for this goal to be reached. Fortunately, once proper communication channels have been established, the procedures should be easily streamlined within days and weeks.
The Next Wave: Equip Your Business with Mobility Solutions
Investment in mobility solutions has never been more vital than it is right now. With social distancing and work-from-home patterns across the world, businesses have been forced to implement mobile technologies to stay afloat in the market. This approach has surely changed the way we work, shop, order, and socialize.
Therefore, the importance of mobile apps is increasing in daily lives and compelling businesses to invest in mobility solutions to thrive in today’s marketplace. The top mobility tools and apps bring some amazing value and can generate fruitful results for the next innovations. Moreover, emerging technologies such as AI, video, social media, ML, digital sales rooms, and much more have been poised to enhance digital transformation and make it easy for them to navigate the evolving times.
In today’s highly changing business world, investment in mobility solutions has become imperative as it also brings some the unmatched benefits such as,
- Improves customer experience
- Increase productivity
- Accelerate business advancement
- Reduced operational cost
- Business process optimization
Key Takeaways
Running a successful business isn’t a simple task. It has never been and will never be, but with the rise of digitalization, many tasks can be streamlined and simplified.
It is essential to integrate your procedures, establish reliable communication channels, and deploy the fines apps and tools to ensure everyone is on the same page.
This will, in turn, boost employee engagement and allow for a smooth transition into the future.