Time to fight!

Its time to fight for your business! Fight for your freedom from the endless drudgery of 24/7 entrepreneurship. Time to fight for equality of resources with the biggest organisations on the planet. It’s time to join the digital revolution! And super charge what you and your business can do.

I get really frustrated sometimes. Especially when I see perfectly good, hardworking business missing out on what technology can do for them. Like people doing things with pen and paper. Or using spreadsheets, contact cards, physical files, and even now and again, believe it or not, faxes!

I see ‘systems’ that involve duplication with paper and electronic copies of records. Or ‘systems’ where different teams have the same records but neither team can see the others work and progress. I see multiple ‘systems’ where one part of the business uses one piece of software, and another something completely different.  And I see ‘systems’ that are more than 10 years old. I see websites with no recent updates. And data thats being collected for no reason. Or CRM’s that are used for the wrong thing.

Worst of all, in todays hyper connected world, I see potential for breach and cyber security threats as a daily occurrence. I’m not exaggerating when I say every business I’ve worked with in the last 12 months has already been the victim of some form of cyber breach.

Its time to get with the times my friends, its time to become a ‘digital’ business. Otherwise you run the very real risk of losing out completely, and shutting down, like so many who didn’t change before you.

What IS digital transformation? For me its simple:

1. Put the customer first. Redraw your processes looking at them from the customers point of view. This means looking at how easily and quickly they can get to what they need.
2. Get information. Use real time data to make real time decisions. Stop guessing and start to research what your customers want, because today, they are surely not afraid to tell you.
3. Empower your business with technology. Whether its the latest cloud based platforms. Or the most recent SaaS subscriptions. There are a ton of things out there you can employ to make your life easier and faster.

Now I know what you are thinking… This all sounds fabulously expensive. And do you know what? 5 years ago you’d be right. 10 years ago business transformation wasn’t available for most businesses outside of elite organisations with multi million pound development budgets. But today its never been cheaper to get ‘digital’. Not only can you now subscribe to cloud based solutions and clever productivity ‘hacks’, you can even ‘hire’ your infrastructure through PaaS (Platform as a service).

These days there’s very few companies that can’t get a technological solution in place within a few months. This simply revolutionises the way they do business, and could maybe even save them from the future.

Where do I start?

There are a number of lenses through which you should look at your business and these offer a streamlined and cohesive approach to transformation.

Business process improvements – look at the processes you already have in the business and look to improve your efficiency and cost effectiveness.

Digital Tax – there is no need to be keeping paper records these days, or let that VAT bill build and build over the year. Free up time with online Vat and cloud based accountancy systems that will revolutionise how you invoice, get paid, and keep records.

GDPR – Looking at your data protection is an ideal way to build these systems from the ground up. And GDPR has the added advantage of helping you to put the customer at the forefront of everything you do.

So please, join the fight! Don’t persevere with the old and tired ways of running your business, have a look at what technology can do for you. Ask your IT company for help. Or even your web supplier. Or even better talk to someone like Cybata, a transformation specialist who can not only work with you to identify where you need to go, but can also help you bring the rest of your business along for the ride too.