The month of June is the perfect time to evaluate your business performance and take steps that’ll help you achieve your goals for the next half of the year. It is also the perfect time to take steps to upgrade and update your technology stack. Having seen what has worked in the first half of the year, you can make upgrading decisions more easily and jump on tech trends that have been effective for other business owners.
Investing in the right technology might just give you the boost your business needs to knock out your goals for the second half of the year.
Here are five smart investments you can make that will help your business thrive throughout the rest of 2022.
1. Get a Secure Website
A website provides a convenient platform for customers to communicate with you, shop for your products, and find out information about the services you offer. By building a valuable website, you’ll draw attention to your brand and attract customers.
The most important feature of a good website is tight security, and the simplest of security measures you can have is to obtain an SSL certificate. Short for Secure Sockets Layer certificates, SSL certificates encrypt all communication between your website browsers and your server, ensuring that any information shared on your website remains private. A certificate management system can help you monitor and manage your certificates, taking the busy work out of online security.
2. Use Office Productivity Software
As your business and its workforce grow, you need to consider improved internal collaboration tools and productivity software. These tools streamline important parts of your workflow such as meeting scheduling, lead generation, project management, and issue tracking, as well as improve communication between team members in your organization.
Some of the more popular collaboration and productivity tools include:
- Asana
- Jira
- Trello
- Basecamp
- ClickUp
- Slack
3. Build a Strong Social Media Presence
Building a strong presence on social media is a simple and effective way to connect with a younger, tech-savvy audience, and reach out to potential customers. As such, consider creating social media accounts for your business, as well as employing a social media manager to maintain them.
Most social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok provide convenient growth metrics — tracking views, likes, and followers — that can help you measure your brand market reach and provide useful feedback to your campaigns. A successful social media campaign can yield far-reaching rewards for your business, so this is definitely a worthwhile investment.
4. Try Inventory Management Software
Keeping track of raw materials and finished products in stock is often a hassle for small and medium-sized enterprises. If this sounds like you, consider investing in an inventory management platform. These platforms simplify common stocking activities such as restocking and ordering.
Inventory management software options include platforms such as Upserve, Ordoro, and Zoho Inventory. These allow you to automate the restocking process, as well as keep easy track of what goes in and out of your storage facilities.
5. Upgrade Your Hardware
You might find your business having to deal with increased order volumes or more clients in the final half of the year as the holidays approach. So, it’s a good idea to prepare for the onrush in advance by upgrading your existing computer hardware.
This might mean getting a better laptop or cash register for the receptionist, or even a total refurbishment of your IT and media department. Do your own research on the best tools for the job, or consult an IT professional to help you out.
Finish Strong
The thing about an investment is that if chosen wisely, it will increase in value over time. By choosing any one of these tech tools to invest in, you’re likely to see positive results by the end of the year. Good luck!
