Nibletz Staff
A physical storefront is where businesses of the past two to three hundred years have thrived, but that is changing. The internet is the hill your business will live and die on for the far-flung future, and it’s up to you to take advantage of that.
No matter the purpose of your start-up, there are plenty of ways the internet, digital media and technology can help you transform your business into a company that can truly utilise all facets of the digital age.
Start off with getting your staff equipped. Get used to performance management. There are plenty of processes and software for your whole team. Once you’ve got the employees in order, you can move ahead with organizing new solutions.
Now that your staff and yourself are equipped with the techniques, it might be time to sort out gadgets. You should look to dole out smartphones and laptops as required to ensure your workforce is mobile and can work from anywhere that is required of them. This is essential especially if your headquarters is ever changing and your staff are based in many different locations. This basic level of equipment will help with productivity and connectivity.
If you do have a solid headquarters, it’s important to equip it with a wifi router that can allow both yourself, clients and guests access to the internet. A wifi router enables some capabilities that don’t just revolve around access to the web; you can connect devices such as a printer or coffee machine to your network.
Get your workforce using Google Drive to collaborate on a cloud-based platform. All your work and admin can be stored on Google’s servers meaning you can access it from anywhere. This is incredibly important as it removes the work from the workplace and stores it anywhere you need it. For a start-up, this is incredibly important as it solves some issues with one solution. You don’t need to worry about backing up documents because Google Drive will do that for you.
Like Google Drive, you should invest in cloud storage. Services like Dropbox and Onecloud offer a storage solution that can combine with Drive to offer you a number of solutions to storing your work and files. If you’re scared of one of these services failing, you can actually utilize a number of them!
Social Media is something that should never be ignored and allows you to basically promote your business for free. Sites like LinkedIn also enable you to network with new clients and collaborators. Twitter and Facebook can also act as a customer service platform. A integrated platform like Hootsuite will allow you to control all of these at once and ensure the same message is heard across all of these sites.
These are just a few ways you can get started, but these tips are among the most powerful. Once you get going, you’ll master these tools and your start-up will benefit from being a truly mobile digital beast.
