3 Best Ways to Leverage Software for Business Growth

When you just start your business, you’re likely swamped with day-to-day tasks and handling any obstacles that come your way. As you become more familiar and confident with your business’s responsibilities, you need to look toward growing to ensure future profitability and long-term success. But how do you do that?

There are many different strategies you can use to expand your business. One of these standout methods is to invest in business software dedicated to making you and your staff members’ jobs easier. Here are three ways you can leverage software to facilitate business growth:

1. Increase overall staff efficiency 

When you begin making decisions to expand your business and increase profitability, the first step for many business owners is to boost staff efficiency. That means evaluating staff members’ everyday responsibilities and developing strategies to complete them quicker while maintaining the quality of their work. With a software solution dedicated to your business type, that process becomes much easier, as it will cater to the tasks specific to your niche.

Let’s say, for example, that you run a massage business, where you employ massage therapists to provide relaxing massages for your clients. However, as your business gains popularity, you’re finding it more difficult to handle scheduling, as you’re outgrowing penciling in massage sessions on a printed schedule. On top of that, you’ve been writing client notes on paper, and as your client pool increases, you begin having trouble keeping track of them.

In this case, you’d invest in software that specifically meets your business’s needs: a massage therapy tool. With a dedicated solution, you can increase operational efficiency with digital scheduling and digital client notes, saving staff members time on tracking bookings and locating notes.

2. Automate marketing and communication

Marketing and communication tools help businesses streamline their messaging and acquire and retain more clients. In particular, automated marketing messages allow businesses to communicate with current and potential customers effortlessly and keep your business top of mind.

Marketing automation also equips you to send messages to distinct client groups, ensuring that they have a personalized communication experience. A few different ways you can group your clients include:

• Communication preferences. Determine whether your clients prefer to receive messages through direct mail, email, or text messages.

• Customer journey stage. The messages you’d send a prospective customer are very different from those you’d send to a long-standing, loyal customer. Use your marketing solution to craft messages and drip campaigns for customers at every stage in their journey to maximize interest in your business.

• Purchase history. Increase customer retention by setting up automated messages based on purchase history. Recommend other products, send coupons, or introduce your referral program to keep customers engaged with your business.

• Loyalty status. For loyal customers who have patronized your business multiple times, you might offer larger discounts or sneak peeks into new products. Or, offer them early access to new products or services.
• Lapsed customers. Inevitably, some clients may suddenly lapse, and it can happen for various reasons, from financial hardship to dissatisfaction. However, that doesn’t mean that the customer isn’t open to making a purchase from your business in the future. Leverage your marketing tools to set up messages that encourage lapsed customers to check out your offerings and re-capture their interest.

The right marketing and communication solution will reduce the time staff members spend on outreach and make your messaging more compelling through personalization and segmentation. There are so many ways you can leverage these tools to your advantage, such as creating personalizable email templates, setting a schedule for social media posts, and more. Consider your marketing goals and how a marketing and communication solution can benefit your specific niche.

3. Streamline HR and hiring processes

As your business grows, so will your need for more staff. This means that you’ll need to dedicate some of your time to hiring, including creating job listings, sifting through applicants, and interviewing suitable candidates. These tasks, while important, take time away from other business-critical responsibilities. This can become a serious issue if you don’t have a dedicated human resources or hiring software solution.

A few ways HR and hiring software can help streamline your processes include:

• Job posting management. Create and post job listings on various job boards and career websites. Your tools will help you ensure that postings are formatted consistently, allowing you to accurately communicate role expectations to attract quality candidates.
• Resume screening. The right hiring software will automatically scan applicant resumes and extract key information to help you determine if they’re qualified to work for your business.
• Interview scheduling. Keep your interview schedule organized with tools that allow you to plan out when you’ll meet with different candidates. Some solutions will even allow you to send automated interview invitation emails, reducing the time you spend planning.

On top of these benefits, a robust hiring software solution will store applicant data in a single centralized location, giving you easy access to their information. Not only will this help you to cultivate relationships with job candidates, but it will also allow you to keep thorough notes on all candidates, making it easier for you to make a hiring decision.

Every business is unique, which means that the software most beneficial for your business can only be determined by you. As your organization grows, consider which points of your operations are hindering your day-to-day or big-picture processes. Then, seek out software that addresses those pain points to facilitate your business’s success.