Digital Smart Solutions to Lower Your Operating Costs

Operating a business these days, whether a start-up venture or a decades-old enterprise, requires sound financial planning and smart decision-making. 

With a more demanding clientele, increasing rental costs and growing list of competitors, it is imperative for every business to think of ways on how it can increase sales while still sustain its positive performance without incurring high costs. When technology advances, it helps companies to lower down operating costs because it can help to reduce or even eliminates the need of manpower. For instance, hotel starting to adopt self-check-in kiosk for guests to check in and out themselves, thus lowered down the operating costs due to decreases the number of receptionists. 

Here are five smart business solutions that can help you achieve your sales goals while making sure that your operating cost is kept at the minimum: 

• Access Control 

Traditional access control might cost a fortune because we need someone to monitor, record, issuance of cards and etc. But with smart access control and cloud technology, access control in Singapore is so much simpler and easier. Some companies or hotel even eliminates the use of cards and replace them with mobile keys. Hence, this will reduce the cost of cards, and avoid misplacement of cards. Technology helps us to have better security and increase convenient and of course reduce operating costs! 

• Video conferences

Imagine how much time and money companies would have saved if they recognized the value of video conferences early on. Utilizing video conferencing to discuss pertinent matters especially for businesses with more than one location is a cost-effective way to get the job done without having to incur airfare and hotel expenses. There are several free video conferencing platforms that companies can make use of. All you need is a fast and reliable internet connection and you are set to get the ball rolling. 

• CRM software 

CRM stands for customer relationship management. CRM software is a system that will help your company manage interactions with current and potential customers. Among many things, a CRM software stores database of your customers and segmentizes them so you know which ones are more likely to buy your products or services. It will help you and your sales and marketing teams to focus their energy on the most relevant part of their jobs — selling — and refrain from taking too much time in mundane and manual tasks such as checking sales performance and customer data from a stack of papers and folders. 

• Outsource work

Rather than hiring an in-house marketing personnel, consider hiring a marketing agency, which can carry out both your traditional and digital marketing needs. Doing so would mean that you will work with a team of competent professionals with decades of experience in the fields. You pay a monthly fee and that’s it. This in place of having to hire another staff, who may or may have little experience in the field. A staff also comes with salary and benefits plus trainings needed to upgrade skills. That’s an additional cost to your company and will prove more expensive than a marketing agency in the long run. 

• Cloud storage and backup

Everything, as they say, is in the cloud. Your company can embrace this too. Let go of the physical servers and go to the cloud for storage and backup needs. Most industry practitioners would, however, say that the best practice is to go hybrid, which means that data is usually backed up in the local system first and then the secure offsite system backs up data from the local device. Check with your service provider on the costs of these options, compare pros and cons and then decide which one suits your needs. 

• Get social 

When used effectively with a focused strategy, social media can help your business reach a broader audience and serve as a platform to market your products and services. Use it wisely. 

These days, the wonders of technology is a Candyland for computer and science enthusiasts, and playground for many netizens who enjoy their presence in various social media forms. Your company can take advantage of technology too to provide smart solutions to help your ventures sustain financial growth and address the needs of your customers sans the expensive cost that comes with marketing and sales efforts.