Six steps to digitise your business in 2019
In 2019 there are still many businesses that could benefit enormously from digitising their systems and investing in their website. If this sounds like it could help your company, now could be the perfect time to act. Here are six steps you can take to digitise your business in 2019.
It is important to note that the first step in digitising business is not any change that you need to make to the IT infrastructure or the way your company operates. No, the first step is ensuring that everyone in the business is embracing the necessary changes.
You need to ensure that your whole team, from the mangers down to the most junior staff members, understand why the changes are taking place and what it will mean for the business. If there is resistance to digitising the company, it can make the whole process far more complicated and frustrating.
You also need to have a good understanding of how your business is going to operate as a digital organisation. Whether digitising for you means creating a brand new website and targeting a specific niche, or simply an overhaul of your internal infrastructure, it will ultimate change how your business runs in many ways.
Sometimes it can be helpful when re-imaging your business to forget about your current business runs, and instead focus on what you would do now if you were starting a new business from scratch. Once you have the optimal idea for the organisation, you can start establish ways to turn this into reality.
If your organisation is currently reliant on physical documentation, now could be the ideal time to change over. Changing up your documentation is an important step in focusing your company on digital growth. There are a huge range of benefits too – it makes searching through and finding key data instantaneous, and can even save you space in the office.
It is now much easier than ever to get your physical document scans – there’s no need to spend hours feeding documents into your own scanner. It’s possible to get specialist businesses such as Images-On-Line to come and scan your documents at your site, or take them away for processing to avoid disruption, if you would prefer.
Your next move could be in a move to cloud services. If you currently manage your own software and have your own servers in-house, moving to cloud services can make huge savings for you in terms of management, and space saving.
If you are worried about the technical complexity of working with cloud computing, you shouldn’t be. Many businesses offered managed cloud computing, for example on popular platforms like Amazon Web Services. Managed services take away the hassle from your businesses and deals with the technical stuff so that you can focus on doing what you do best.
In 2019 it is essential that your business invests properly in search engine optimisation (SEO) and other forms of digital marketing. Organic search traffic, achieved through SEO investment, can be a hugely valuable marketing channel and you would be amazed at the difference that can be made by having a unified digital marketing strategy.
Remember that all aspects of digital marketing can work together as an overall strategy, so as well as SEO, it’s worth looking further into avenues such as social media marketing and pay-per-click (PPC).
As you digitise your business you also need to make sure that your staff are best placed to make the most of the changes. It is a great idea to provide your staff with any training that they need to keep up with the changing face of the company. For some members of staff these sorts of changes can be daunting, and if they don’t feel supported, they could end up losing morale, or even leaving the company.
It is always best to retain the talent that you have and provide them with opportunities to thrive in your digitised business.
