Article by Rose Joseph
The digital age is advancing rapidly, and businesses are already taking the steps needed to leverage the growth in automation and technology to improve their business planning.
Reports from Inc. Magazine reveal that small businesses are particularly prioritizing AI tool integration as one of their biggest goals for 2024. With data showing the growth rate of technology to be doubling every one and a half years, maximizing these potential avenues is a now-or-never matter.
Are you looking to leverage technology and automation to improve planning in your organization? If so, let’s dive into the biggest segments that will likely see the most growth in terms of automation and tech integration, especially for business leaders looking to improve their long-term solutions.
Accounting and Revenue Management
Financial planning and accounting are essential for managing your business’ money and maintaining consistent cash flow. Over 66% of small businesses experience significant struggles with finances, so there is a definite need for solutions that make the process more sustainable and effective. This rings especially true for companies with unique billing setups, such as those that involve varied consumption and subscription plans. SOFTRAX’s enterprise subscription billing has seen a lot of traction because of this particular need. Modern businesses deal with a variety of platforms, so its system handles all levels of billing and automates both simple and complex processes.
The key to this automation tool’s effectiveness is its compliance with policy. Since everything follows a uniform guideline set by governing bodies, including widely accepted accounting standards like ASC 606 and IFRS 15, entities no longer have to worry about manually checking for errors, following outdated practices, and scaling their operations. It also integrates revenue recognition capabilities, which can be crucial for businesses regardless of whether they operate online or offline. Keeping track of financial records and distribution may be crucial, but they are mundane tasks that often cause problems for businesses. Hence, this level of complex automation can be a game-changer for both small businesses and larger corporations.
Analytics for Demand, Supply, and Expansion
What differentiates the companies that survive rapid change and challenges is insight. Decision-making is an unmistakable pillar of business planning, and being able to make informed choices requires reliable analytics. One of the core ideas in The Power of Small is to “Think Global, Start Local.” For any company with long-term goals and expansion plans, the key is starting with a core market that you can analyze for insights on what product or service is more popular, what pricing changes need to be made, and whether or not you need to tweak your marketing strategies.
While many businesses may try their hand at this, the key to successfully acting on this data is proper forecasting and meaningful conclusions from analytics. A popular tool for this is Board, which makes use of tailor-made analytics operations and AI to provide automated predictive modeling and a statistics suite. This gives business leaders a better grasp of possible scenarios and an easier way to gather insights from existing data. Since this suite has been developed for self-service analytics, users can also turn raw data into visual analyses in seconds.
Collaboration and Productivity
This is arguably one of the fields in business seeing the most progress. Since collaboration, communication, and productivity are essential for all industries, tech has seen so much movement to cater to these needs. Since the rapid rise of remote work and hybrid setups, the adoption of collaborative tech has been immense.
Despite the increase in communication channels, there is still a need for streamlining to minimize conflict. According to Let’s Grow Leaders, 71% of workers still experience workplace conflict. Hence, businesses are leaning towards platforms like Asana. This work management platform primarily provides various project and task management tools so different people can more easily collaborate, track, and organize different active projects. What differentiates it from other tools is its inclusion of Messages, which allows users to send communication to other team members in real-time.
Workflow has also been improved using file-sharing tools and live platforms that multiple employees can work on at once. On top of this, automation has become a huge part of data entry. This is a process usually plagued with human error. As a tedious task, it also hinders employees from more thought-oriented or creative tasks that they can spend more productive hours on. With automated data management, businesses can significantly improve data quality, boost employee productivity, and ultimately maximize their resources.
Customer Experience
Whether B2B or B2C, businesses thrive by satisfying customers and driving in new clientele. The importance of creating a good customer experience cannot be understated, as 59% of customers will walk away from a brand they love if they’ve had multiple bad experiences. On top of that, people tend to focus on negative experiences more and share this with others online. People still seek out human reviews and opinions on feedback platforms and social media, so companies continue to invest in tech that makes the customer experience better with minimal intervention needed.
As a result of this demand, OpenAI recently partnered with T-Mobile for an AI-powered customer service platform designed to provide more intuitive customer care beyond the capabilities of current chatbots. In its current form, the build is already able to provide faster responses, privacy, and security with real-time decisions. Named IntentXC, the platform will be incorporated into T-Mobile’s business model in 2025, with the additional intention of providing a blueprint for other companies over time. Such tools also address another major part of business planning: creating customer experience strategies that help you grow and stay afloat during economic shifts. With smart automated services, building loyalty and executing strategies should become a less daunting task.
Final Thoughts
Businesses have a large selection of tools at their disposal, and these will only get more sophisticated as time goes on. Early adoption is key for that competitive advantage, particularly as these very tools enable businesses to better anticipate further changes in the market. Whether focusing on just one or all of the avenues above, there’s no doubt that technology and automation are an inevitability in the world of successful business planning.
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