In business, there is an ever-present need to ensure that operations take place that cultivate high levels of performance and productivity. Every year, competition across all industries and sectors becomes more intense with new firms entering the marketplace. It is important to recognize that the marketplace has also become truly global in the last decade. The rise of ecommerce and the increasing willingness for customers to shop online has created a situation where competitors do not need to be based in your locality or even in the same country as yours. Provided they can deliver goods in a reasonable period and to similar prices and quality standards, these businesses can be in direct competition with your firm. It is therefore vitally important to take steps to create high levels of productivity across the organization so that it can remain competitive in modern times.
How unicorns and startups in Southeast Asia are harnessing cloud technology for growth
In this article, there will be an in-depth discussion of how technology can be incorporated to boost business performance and productivity. The examples contained here are applicable to a wide range of companies across all sectors of business.
Supporting agile working methods
It is becoming widely accepted that agile working methods can help to cultivate an engaged and productive workforce. This new form of working is growing in popularity in Southeast Asia as it can create a more dynamic and stimulating working environment and also helps to support remote and hybrid working practices. These can allow staff members to gain greater control over their work–life balances and escape a predictable 9-5 routine of working in one shared workspace. However, to fully support agile working methods, it is vital that you have experts in this area of business practice who can support this new approach to project and task work whilst ensuring that teams function effectively. Ideally, you will want key staff members to gain an Agile coaching certificate so that they have the latest skills and methodologies that can be disseminated to the wider workforce.
In addition, your firm will need to invest in different forms of tech that can support agile working practices whilst ensuring that productivity and worker performance remain high. For example, the latest video conferencing platforms will allow your scrum masters to bring together teams for meetings and breakout sessions without needing to be together in a shared physical space. In addition, the use of team chat platforms can ensure that rapid communication takes place between staff on a variety of business tech devices.
Project management platforms
In many businesses, there will be a need to bring together different teams and departments to collaborate on key projects. More complex projects that rely on the timely completion of smaller tasks by different staff need to be efficiently managed.
There must be a clear understanding of responsibilities, timescales, and current progress on every sub-task to ensure that delays do not become commonplace or that work is duplicated because of silo working practices.
Thankfully, in 2023, there will be a wide range of project management platforms that can provide an all-in-one solution when seeking to manage complex projects. These platforms are generally based online and allow staff and stakeholders to access them in real-time.
When progress is made on specific tasks, this can be updated on the project boards (often by using a colour coding system to indicate the level of completion for each task). This allows all parties to have a clear understanding of the overall progress and where work is still required. Here are some of the best project management platforms in 2023 that help to promote high levels of productivity when teamwork is required.
Data-driven business insights
Businesses across all sectors of industry need to ensure that they make intelligent decisions when they are considering plans that will shape their future direction and growth. Traditionally, these decisions would be made solely by senior managers and leaders who drew on their business acumen and experience to produce strategies that were largely driven by intuition. However, in modern times, there is a need to ensure that important decisions are backed up by industry-specific data. This reduces the margin for error and can help businesses to reduce uncertainty in their decision-making.
Technology now plays a key role in this process, specifically, the use of business intelligence platforms. These software platforms use advanced analytics to take high-volume and complex business data from multiple sources. It is then combined and analyzed before producing summary, comparison, and statistical information that allows a business to gain powerful insights that drive decision-making.
In short, these platforms can help businesses to make high-level decisions which have a greater chance of success than simply relying on human expertise and intuition.