Can your business benefit from innovation and automation?

In a recent Australian Industry Report it is suggested that up to half a million jobs are at risk due to digital disruption and automation, of those are accountants, bookkeepers, secretaries, admin staff, banking staff and retail outlet staff. This is backed by a similar report by the Oxford University that up to 47% of jobs will be lost due to technology and automation.

These trends are alarming. We have already seen a great change in consumer behaviour, consumers have more choices than ever before, they can research and buy from a needle to a house online without leaving the comfort of their living room, our work force demands the flexibility to work remotely, our family and friends prefer talking to us via facebook, Twitter and Skype rather than visiting each other. The technology has already reshaped our lives and it’s going to increase exponentially in coming years.

If you are in a business that uses paper you need to rethink because our society is moving towards a paperless society. If you are in a product manufacturing industry, you need to rethink as most of our manufacturing jobs will be done by robots. If you operate or work in a factory or warehouse, well it will not be too far in the future when your job will be done by artificial intelligent machines who can work 24 hours and do not need a holiday.

If we look back in history we can clearly see that when businesses didn’t take advantage of new trends they were forgotten very quickly. This applies to all regardless of type and size of the business.

Here are a few suggestions that you can adopt in your business to keep up with the technology wave.

Re-Invent and Reshape

No matter what type of business you are in there is always room for improvement, however you need to take a step back and look around to see if your product or service will be required in five or ten years’ time. It’s never too late to change your skillset and re-train and re-shape your products and services so it is still a viable business in the future.

Digital and Mobile Presence

If you are a small takeaway shop or a barber shop, a massage therapist or a book keeper, a business coach or an IT shop, you need an online presence. If you don’t have an attractive website you are losing your customers to your competitors. Also think ahead and get a custom mobile app for your customers so they can view appointments, events, specials and product listings on their mobile . Keep your social profile active, don’t hesitate to get an account with products like HootSuite  and get organised.

Cloud and Automation

If you haven’t heard about Cloud applications and SAAS (software as a service) then now is a good time to get up to speed. You can look at services like Dropbox for file storage, Xero as your accounting package and CRM systems for managing customer interactions. Besides using Cloud applications it is also critical to use the integration and automation services where more than one Cloud applications can talk to each other and automate a business process, i.e. quoting, job scheduling, payment processing and reporting.

YZM Technologies is a Perth based Software Company specialising in building custom software, databases and mobile apps and helping small businesses achieve better results by optimising and automating business processes.