The COVID-19 pandemic has driven businesses to immediately adopt agile strategies to keep their operations afloat. However, many enterprises adopting remote work are realizing that their current technological resources are insufficient for their needs. And if your tech is outdated or inefficient, it may not be able to deliver the results you strive for. Follow these IT strategies to optimize workflows and deliver optimal results.

Upgrade your tech to meet business needs

With the economy starting to go south, spending on IT might not seem like a smart financial decision. However, you need advanced, reliable technology now more than ever to reach wider audiences, meet deadlines, satisfy clients, and increase your bottom line. What’s more, investing in technology has several long-term benefits that will save costs in the years to come.

You don’t have to upgrade everything right away; you just need to find better alternatives for equipment and software that cause bottlenecks or hinder your workforce from achieving peak productivity.

Start by evaluating what devices your company currently has, including employee-owned devices that your staff use for remote work. Devices eventually lose some of their functionality over time, or they become obsolete. If old devices cause project delays and you have sufficient budget to purchase new machines, replace them. On the other hand, outdated software can also compromise your security, so update to the most recent versions and install patches right away.

Automate to streamline processes

Automation allows your employees to get rid of mundane and repetitive tasks and focus on things that require thumbs and sentience, like product development, process improvement, and personalized customer experience. It also speeds up workflows while eliminating human error.

Some of the processes you can automate include:

• Payment management, including invoicing and billing, to speed up checkout process
• Inventory management, which automatically reports product availability updates in real time
• Customer service, such as sending a template email response to queries sent through the “Contact Us” tab on your website, and notifying customer assistants to follow up with a phone call
• Internal bureaucratic tasks, like requesting for time off and travel authorization

Improve your website to drive sales

People have been mandated to stay at home to lower the risk of infection, and this new indoor lifestyle has led them to surf the web more often and for longer periods of time. This could be an opportunity to strengthen your digital marketing strategy — and that includes improving your website.

Faster internet connections have helped shape a culture that demands immediate feedback and results. So make sure that your website loads quickly. The slower your website loads, the higher the bounce rate: a website that loads in three seconds is 32% more likely to experience a bounce than a website that loads in one second.

And if you haven’t optimized your site for mobile, it’s high time you did. By 2021, it’s predicted that 54% of sales will come from mobile eCommerce platforms — if your site doesn’t load properly on mobile phones and tablets, you’ll get left behind.

Your website is also a gateway to your business, where potential clients can get to know your products or services. If it doesn’t look professional and has a poor user experience (UX), you might lose prospective sales. Consider hiring website designers, like our experts at Midwest Data Iowa. We can create sophisticated pages for your business, with UX in mind. We’ll also ensure that your site is SEO-focused, so it can rank high on search engines.

Midwest Data Iowa offers a wide array of technology services to businesses in SouthWest corner of Iowa. From leveraging or upgrading your existing IT assets to guiding you in making the smartest IT investments to revamping your website, we got you covered. Contact us today, or call us at 844-640-3283.