THE TECHNOLOGY PROCESS

 

As a leader in your business or place of work, you may feel limited due to technological inefficiencies. We all have challenges, but many can be solved with time, investment, and shared alignment. It’s important to explore and adopt new ways of being productive together as a team.

It might be hard to consider managing the business differently. Rightfully so, things have been set up the way they are for reasons that come with experience and expertise. While some come close, there is no “one-size-fits-all” technology solution that meets the varying needs of a business across departments. And with the rise of remote work, many businesses have found it hard to attract, train, and retain talented team members. No matter how much research you do, investing in migrating to a new technology platform is a risk without first-hand experience. You may know the specific functionality you need, but you may not know what you don’t know when it comes to newer time-saving features and compatibility. Many don’t need the Porsche of technology stacks to run the business effectively, but a turbo does wonders for any motor at a remarkably affordable price. The important thing to keep in mind is that you want a technology stack that accommodates, competes, and scales now, three and ten years down the line.

Outline Current Technology Architecture

List the technology you use for the business and primary functions of each, organized by department. Make note of the team members that utilize each software and what for. While complaining in the workplace is usually discouraging to morale, acknowledge the pain-points you experience using your current software. Is there a lack of communication or accountability? Do you spend hours each week digging through emails to maintain either? Can your team operate remotely? How do you manage operations, manufacturers or agencies, and how do you relay and document pertinent information for team members? Is the digital experience of your brand lacking? What does success look like if technology is no longer a hurdle, but a stepping stone?

No matter the industry and line of work you’re in, there are likely opportunities to leverage technology in support of a more positive, collaborative, and productive work environment.

Technology Stack Overview

As mentioned in The Branding Process, the technology you choose needs to play well together. Below is a list of industry-standard softwares that are compatible and scalable for most business needs.

General Automation Platforms

With general automation platforms you can connect and share data between software via application programming interface (API) without a developer. With the increasing digital demands of team members and consumers, GAPs such as Tray.io and the more popular Zapier are utilized by many businesses. Some cloud-based software companies make their platforms API compatible with built-in triggers that can be configured once you establish a connection between applicable softwares. Other platforms simply allow for open API access, making it so that a developer can create API triggers and map “fields” custom to your needs accordingly. This means that depending on your software’s compatibility, you may have no need for a general automation platform. However, it is a good idea to ensure that your software stack integrates with GAPs to integrate softwares in the future if need ever arises.

Tray.io

• $500 /mo
• Superior flexibility with built-in debugging features
• Modern UX and simple UI
• Enterprise security
• Build exactly what you need with loops, conditionals, branching, and more
• Identify issues quickly to build and iterate quickly

Zapier

• $20 /mo
• Shopify and Square only available with Zapier
• Easy to use
• Works well for most “small” business needs

Analytics Management Software

In setting up your G Suite and Google Admin you gain access to a variety of tools. Bing has a similar offering. These tools will help you track and measure analytics granularly, and provide a custom top-level view of the specific information (KPIs) most pertinent to your business.

Access charts, graphs, and reports to better serve your community online and in-person. Reach more potential and repeat customers with targeted ads via Google Ads.

Work Management Platform

Whether you’re a small business, startup, or enterprise corporation, Asana can help you and your team manage operations on-site and remotely. Many businesses use Trello or Basecamp to manage their teams and track projects. These are very well established software companies used by thousands of teams around the world, but they do not compete with Asana. Monday is most comparable to Asana, and if you are opposed to Google-owned software (understandably so considering Google rescinded their slogan of “don’t do evil”) it is an alternative.

Asana

• Organize by team, department, or function
• Create operational structure and/or projects
• Create tasks within “projects” 
• Set due dates and assign to team members
• Track time on projects or tasks with Harvest or other time-tracking software integrations
• Add columns and custom fields to each department for more robust sorting and quick reference
• Configure automations between departments
• Add comments to projects or tasks, attach files, and tag team members to notify them (or configure automatic notifications)
• Provide custom task lists per team member
• Limit access to departments, projects, or tasks
• Add guest users to manage contractors and agencies (reducing email)
• Track team member progress
  • Learn more in the blog, How Asana Scales Business.

• Development Management Software

There may come a time when custom development for your website, app, or business software becomes necessary. In this case, it would be nice to have the means of tracking development projects without changing project management software. Asana will integrate with most industry-standard development platforms, keeping you and team members out of the code and up to date on development projects.

• Github, AWS, Jira, etc.

Point of Sale

When it comes to online and in-store sales, it’s best to have customer data available in one place. Using Shopify as a point of sale gives you the ability to process and store data for online and in-store sales within one platform. Connect Shopify to your CRM via API to view transaction and customer history from a dashboard to better report and analyze data. Set “triggers” to automatically update “contact’s” profile or send notifications based on customer and team member actions. Note: These “triggers” will likely correlate with your customer journey map as can be established with a Brand Playbook. Shopify’s shipping features are user friendly and integrate with DHL, UPS, and USPS accounts.

Inventory Management Software

When products are sold through multiple channels it’s important to have inventory updates syncing and/or available in one place. Shopify connects to other software where inventory is managed. Again, sync order and transaction history at a customer level by integrating Shopify with your CRM.

Financial Accounting Software

Regardless of how you’ve tracked finances up to this point, we can all agree that having pertinent financial records and reports available across departments is valuable. Unless you already use an ERP software to house and manage your financials, Quickbooks is an affordable and accommodating platform that integrates with most software. You can share payroll data between Harvest (or other time-tracking software) as well as Gusto with Quickbooks to streamline managing payroll.

Team Communication Software

Connect team members and track conversations using Slack. Integrate Slack with Asana to get automated updates pertinent to your entire team or individual departments. Create channels to categorize conversations and limit congestive small talk to designated spaces.

Customer Relationship Management Software

Zoho CRM is free, but Zoho as a whole is limiting and can be difficult to use. NetSuite also offers a free CRM, but everything else comes at a substantial price point. Salesforce is very costly altogether, and while it has good email marketing capabilities, it’s not for everyone. Hubspot advertises a free CRM, but they charge depending on how many “contacts” you store. That being said, Hubspot is the all around best option (if you can afford it) as it scales to meet the needs of any business.

Zoho

• Real-time website visitor data
• Website chat (free)
• Lead scoring
• Social media profile attachment
• Free – $45 /user
• Less resources – Zoholics is an annual conference for detailed walkthroughs of every aspect of the platform and upcoming functions / features (recordings available online)
• Not so great customer service
• Mobile app

Salesforce

• User friendly
• Online resources to learn from, conferences / events with hands-on training
• Enterprise solutions
• Expensive
• Mobile app

Hubspot

• Inbound marketing, sales, and customer service
• Dynamic content
• Forms
• Website chat
• No mobile app
• Free CRM (cost applies over certain number of stored contacts)
• Much more

Video Conferencing Software

Many use video “conferencing” software such as FaceTime, Facebook video, or Google Meets (formerly Google Hangouts). It’s also likely you’ve already used Zoom or GoTo Meeting. For those unfamiliar, Zoom allows users to connect online over video and to record meetings with high-quality video. Audio quality will vary more or less depending on your microphones, but it has sound dampening features to minimize background noise (as do other apps). Use Zoom to conduct remote meetings, customer service calls where screen sharing is necessary, virtual happy hours, or other scenarios where a more human interaction and/or screen sharing is beneficial. 

Call Management Software

If you conduct outgoing sales calls and want to track or record conversations, RingCentral or