There has never been a more turbulent time in business than today. With artificial intelligence and machine learning challenging the way we work, customer expectations are being shaken by the companies that are fastest to embrace them. This, together with an environment of widespread economic uncertainty, and it's clear that businesses are under more pressure than ever before to do more with less.
This is particularly true for medium-sized businesses, who can find themselves in a difficult position to embark on innovative projects. Larger businesses have more resources at their fingertips, while smaller businesses can iterate faster thanks to their nimble size — but there are still plenty of ways for medium-sized businesses to embrace digital transformation and stay competitive.
Breaking down silos with new tech
Siloed working is one of the biggest roadblocks to innovation for medium-sized businesses. Teams working in silo creates ‘trapped’ knowledge as isolated staff don’t have the opportunity to share their learnings with the wider group. Naturally, this wastes time and energy as different teams expend precious resources exploring solutions to the same issues. But it no longer has to be this way, thanks to the exciting new tools at your disposal. For example, here are just a few of the ways medium-sized businesses are already using digital advances to strengthen communication between different departments:
Embrace automated project management
Let's face it, project management can often eat up much more time than teams budget for. But there are now solutions that automate the more menial aspects of project management and enhance decision-making, giving your staff more time to focus on what they do best: furthering business objectives. From taking and circulating meeting minutes with Copilot to keeping everyone updated on a project’s status with Asana, implementing an automated project management system helps to streamline processes and keep everyone on the same page while ensuring nothing gets missed — and nobody’s schedule has to suffer in the process.
Explore cloud-based data platforms
Your sales team’s data might be as useful to them as it is to marketing, product development, or customer services. Unlock the possibilities of extracting more value from each teams’ learnings by adopting a cloud-based data platform, such as Amazon Redshift, Azure Synapse, or Google Cloud. When everyone has access to one centralised source of information, every team can work faster and more efficiently, while drawing new insights out of existing information becomes easy across the entire business.
Create a new communication channel
Fostering an environment where employees across the business feel free to share their ideas can be as easy as making a dedicated place for this to happen. New AI-based platforms like Mem and Notion AI Q&A make collaborating on fresh ideas easy and powerful, with no-code interfaces that make demonstrating or mocking up complex concepts simple, and tools to instantly collate and present your teams’ findings when they’re ready.
Foster continual L&D
When it comes to staying competitive, adopting new solutions is only half of the battle. In a wave of gripping technological evolution, it’s easy to lose sight of how crucial people power is and will always be in the business world. Keeping your employees up to date with the latest best practices for your industry is crucial, and decision-makers who choose to do so are sowing the seeds of innovation for the road ahead.
Thankfully, there are lots of affordable methods for medium-sized businesses to embrace continual development. For example, AI-powered platforms now make it possible for employees to receive personalised training programmes based on their own unique career path, skill gaps, and interests. Having these custom programmes available will boost engagement, and hopefully make decisions around promotions or changing teams simpler and more effective down the line.
Meanwhile, cloud-based learning platforms offer ample opportunity to keep your workforce ahead of the game on training. By delivering learning experiences online rather than in-person or by an external agent, your training material instantly becomes more accessible, collaborative, easy to implement, and scalable. Your employees will be able to learn at a time that suits them best, rather than whenever you’re lucky enough to have everyone in the same room.
Plus, these platforms eliminate the more menial aspects of learning and development. No more begging your staff to fill out feedback forms or manually reminding them to complete a certain module before the deadline — these tasks can now all be automated.
Transforming your future
It’s important to remember that your business doesn’t need the budget of a large corporation or the flexibility of a start-up to stay ahead of the competition. The key lies in having a proactive attitude. By incorporating the right solutions into the mix and making continuous training a priority, you ensure that collaboration and development can flourish across every department of the business.
With this combination, digital transformation can easily be a game-changer for medium-sized businesses. These new technological advances give you the power to boost efficiency, make smarter decisions, iterate new plans faster, and develop the competitive edge required to futureproof your operations for years to come. It’s simply a matter of having the right approach.
