You can offer great products and services and market them in a compelling way. But if you haven't effectively streamlined your business operations, your company isn't likely to do as well as it could. Productive and efficient backend business operations keep your company thriving.
Operations are so important that there is an operational technology showcase called TEX Week, devoted to new technology tools that facilitate improving business operations.
"Operations management is crucial for a company to function and ultimately impacts both productivity and profit," says May Habib, founder and CEO of Qordoba, an AI company featuring a content intelligence platform that edits written text and suggests changes.
"A productive company is a profitable one," continues Habib. "To realize these benefits of smooth business operations, you need to arm your teams with the right tools and the most effective processes."
Effective Business Operations Keep Things Humming
Your company's products or services may be what gets the attention of customers, but it's the behind-the-scenes operations that keep things humming.
Here are some of the top benefits of ensuring effective business operations.
Product Quality
Effective business operations help ensure organized and targeted management, which leads to high-quality products and services.
Increased Revenue
Customers buy from companies that keep an eye on quality. The more revenue coming in, the more your company can expand—providing you have effective business operations at work.
Decreased Waste
Companies that run organized, well-managed business operations generally experience less waste. This saves time and money for your employees and your company.
Satisfied Customers
When you run a tight ship and ensure that you have quality, reliable products and services, your customers are bound to experience the benefits. Satisfied customers keep coming back and refer.
New Tech to Help Streamline Business Operations
The following tools and app—some released in the last year or so—may help improve your company's business operations.
Process Automation Tools
Process automation tools built using artificial intelligence (AI) automate more mundane business processes so that you and your employees can focus on analytical and creative tasks.
Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism and electroNeek augment employee actions in cloud apps and desktop. Such programs automate any business process that can be described by an instruction.
"Process automation tools streamline workflows and speed up the completion of typical office tasks," says electroNeek Robotic's CEO, Sergey Yudovskiy. "It's becoming impossible to compete in a digitally transforming world without high-speed, automated support of everyday, tedious tasks that tend to waste human capacity. "
Customer Relationship Management Platforms
Automating marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) is an increasing trend, particularly when it comes to converting website visitors.
Apps such as Crowdy.ai and FOMO help you build customer trust and turn website visitors into customers. Such apps display on your website recent customer actions like purchases, newsletter signups and reviews. Given that customers tend to believe other customers more than advertising, such apps can increase conversions.
Other similar CRM apps to improve business operations include Proof, Yotpo and Act!
Note Apps
Taking notes during meetings and brainstorming is an essential part of ensuring that business operations remain productive and steady. The app Gooba 3 offers smooth note taking and interfacing, and the ability to retrieve a note in a few seconds.
Similar apps, some of which have been on the market longer, include Notion, Evernote and Bear.
Social Media Management Platforms
Shayne Sherman, CEO of TechLoris, a website that helps with PC issues, improved his business operations by cutting down on time spent with social media.
"Recently, we started using Loomly. This social media management tool has reduced the amount of time we spend fiddling with our social posts," says Sherman. "In addition to post optimization and collaboration features, the post suggestion feature really helps cut down the time spend finding and researching post topics."
Other social media management platforms include Buffer, Hootsuite, Sendible and Post Planner.
Workflow/Collaboration Apps and Platforms
On busy days, staying productive and on task can be challenging. A wide variety of platforms and apps help you keep your eye on your goals and ensure everything gets done. Some platforms that keep you on task and productive include Slack, Zapier, Trello and Toggl.
If you're finding that small tasks fall through the cracks, Nick Kamyshan, CEO of Chanty, an AI-powered team chat platform, suggests IDoneThis.
"The app keeps track of your everyday tasks for business operations, not just the bigger projects," Kamyshan says.
A productive company is a profitable one. To realize these benefits of smooth business operations, you need to arm your teams with the right tools and the most effective processes.
—May Habib, founder and CEO, Qordoba
"Employees can quickly add tasks and mark them as done," he continues. "As the CEO, I can see exactly where each employee is with their duties for the day and whether something blocked them from getting their jobs done. As a result, we no longer miss deadlines or neglect small, yet vital, details."
Read more articles on organizational productivity.
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