Five steps to help you add value

Virtualising your business through technology
Five steps to help you add value

As technology develops, new opportunities for smarter business will continue to emerge. New technology has the potential both to make things more efficient and open up opportunities for you to develop your competitive advantage.

It’s very important to keep up with new developments, and the Solution Guide ‘Keeping up with technology’ will help you here.

But in order to identify those opportunities you need a systematic way of thinking about them. The following five-step process will help you identify areas where technology can add value. It’s not necessarily sequential, and there can be overlap between each step, but it’s a useful approach. Here’s how it works:

1. Analyse your business processes
The first step is to understand your business processes. For example, if you run a painting business, then obviously painting is your core process - it’s what you’re in business to do. But like any business you have a number of other processes - for example, marketing (getting customers), invoicing (getting the money), administration (doing estimates and contracts), human resources (finding, selecting and paying staff) - and so on. These are essential, but they take time and attention away from doing the actual painting.

2. Organise the processes
Once you’ve identified all your processes, how can you make them as efficient as possible by putting better systems in place? The more efficient these non-core processes are, the more time you’ll have to spend on painting.

3. Digitise where possible
Can you digitise any of these processes to make them even more efficient? For example, if you write manual estimates and invoices for customers, can you use a laptop mobile printer to automate and simplify the process and print out these documents on the spot? (The quicker you invoice, the sooner you’re likely to get paid.)

How do you attract new customers? Perhaps a website - in effect a 24-hour marketing tool - would help you. How do you get your supplies? Instead of having to take time away from work to go and get them, why not order them online and have them delivered?

4. Mobilise the information
Once your key business information is digitised, it becomes possible to access it from anywhere. For example, you can access your email via your mobile phone or laptop - which means that if you’re expecting an important email you’re not tied to your office while you wait for it to arrive.

5. ‘Virtualise’ where possible
Can you replace non-core physical processes with virtual ones? A simple example is emailing invoices or estimates rather than writing or printing them and mailing them out. Can you add value to your customers by using technology to make it easier for them? For example, the Internet has become a major medium for selling real estate, because it allows buyers to take virtual tours without even having to leave their own house. In fact many overseas buyers in particular now purchase houses without having ever set foot in them. Similarly, many hotels, resorts, even bed and breakfast owners now offer virtual tours of their accommodation on the Internet. For prospective guests, this takes away the anxiety they may have about what it would be like to stay there.