The three pillars of an efficient business

Efficiency is as important as talent or hard work when it comes to business success. In this new economy, the most effective way to increase efficiency is to lean on digital technologies that simplify workflows, create better customer experiences and allow for rapid growth. “The pandemic forced us all to change,” says Adrian Towsey, Area Vice President, growth business from Salesforce. “Now we’re seeing digitisation because it makes businesses more efficient, able to move faster and have happier customers. And this has a multi-pronged effect, reducing business costs and increasing revenue.”  

If you’re looking to bring your business along on the journey of digital efficiency, three pillars need to work together: automation, productivity and speed. Let’s take a closer look at these areas.

Automation

Automating manual processes reduces the impact of issues like double-handling, miscommunication and data inaccuracy, having the dual effect of lowering business costs and increasing revenue. Each business will have a different idea of how and where automation can be beneficial, but it’s most potent when integrated across the whole business. 

Consider the benefits of automation through two lenses: that of the customer, and that of the business itself. Automation that effectively shares customer data or captures feedback will give customers the seamless experience that they value, so it’s important to automate customer-facing processes where possible. “The customer doesn’t see themselves as being on a journey through your purchase funnel, they see themselves as engaged in a conversation with your business,” says Towsey. 

On the other side of the coin, integrating automated processes across departments can provide businesses with serious benefits. “A great example is Sphere Drones,” Adrian Towsey says. “By moving their marketing, sales and service departments onto one platform, they were able to open up a new revenue stream through their subscription platform, Curo. This expanded their operations from selling and servicing drones to helping customers manage their end-to-end drone operations including maintenance and compliance.” By automating their processes, Sphere Drones created a better relationship with their customers as well as being able to process support requests at triple the previous capacity.

Looking for more business efficiency advice? Follow the lead of the experts with the Salesforce eBook, The Small and Medium Business Efficiency Toolkit

Productivity

Business-wide digital integration increases productivity because it lets everyone work together. An integrated CRM, for instance, brings siloed customer data and processes into one stream, giving each department in the business an identical, real-time picture of who the customer is and what they need. Other benefits might include seamless communication between marketing and sales to effectively follow leads, or sales data from both ecommerce and bricks-and-mortar stores shared with operations and inventory management teams. 

Digital tech can also increase productivity by giving businesses a scalable solution, keeping processes ticking along even as the business rapidly grows. Towsey found this with fragrance brand who is elijah, which struggled to manage its wholesale and retail channels as it increased in size. “Using Salesforce, we were able to simplify and automate a lot of their processes across both sides of the business,” says Towsey. “We were able to feed their email wholesale and retail orders all into Salesforce.” By seeing their orders in one place, who is elijah has seen an increase in orders being sent out, greater accuracy in packing those orders, and an ability to forecast materials to keep up with customer demand.

Speed

The great advantage of digitisation is agility. By making data-informed decisions in real time, businesses can gain a competitive advantage, respond to rapid changes in the market, or make moves in line with ever-changing customer trends. To do this, a business has to have the right ‘digital backbone’ of effective tech, and Towsey recommends keeping four points in mind when making a digital move:

• Make a plan: Think about where you are now and where digital technology will ideally take you. “Start by mapping out your current processes and ideally, your north star of where you want the business to get to,” Towsey says.
• Create a list of priorities: What is it you want to achieve? “Consider the impact, effort, cost and dependencies of each piece.”
• Identify a single source of truth: Think hard about the technology and provider, and critically identify how every element works together. “How are your different systems going to talk to each other? What is at the core?”
• Get everyone on board: Adopting new technology works best with business-wide planning and consultation. “Make sure you build alignment across the business and have a solid feedback loop.”