This is undoubtedly the most exciting time to be alive. Technology is advancing at such breakneck speed that it’s hard to keep up with all of the latest developments. In business, innovation is having a significant impact, not just on the products we use, but on bottom lines too. Here are just some of the way that innovations are helping businesses reduce costs and thrive.
3D Printing
In the past, if you wanted to prototype a new product you had to go through a lot of processes. The first thing you had to do was design a new product. Then you had to create the moulds for it. Then you had to recalibrate all the tools and finally put it together. Usually, your first prototype was a disaster and needed to be redesigned from the ground up. The process was time-consuming. And all the little individual stages added enormously to the cost.
But thanks to 3D printing, the cost of prototyping is falling. It means that it’s now far easier to bring a new product or design concept to market. With 3D printing, there’s no need to change tools or create new moulds. New products or parts can just be printed out. If they work, great. If they don’t, no problem. Just print out a better design.
Application Packaging
Companies are always looking for ways to reduce the cost and improve the efficiency of their app portfolio. But often it’s not entirely obvious how to do this.
But now companies are specialising in packaging up business apps and making them more streamlined. Ultimately this means faster processes and better use of time. Look online for more info.
Social Media Aggregation
Until recently, managing social media was a time-consuming process. Every day, if not every hour, you had to log on to your social media accounts, update posts and communicate with clients. But now that time sink looks like it’s a thing of the past. Thanks to apps like Hootsuite, businesses no longer need to break up workflows to attend to social media. They can just generate all the content they require on a Monday morning, and then tell Hootsuite when and where to post. They can also manage their correspondence form one single panel, saving both time and energy.
Electronic Invoicing And Payments
Because businesses use invoices to get payment, they rarely think of the costs. But invoicing is a costly business. There’s the cost of paper and the cost of ink. And there’s also the cost of manually processing all those bits of paper. It all adds up to a big, but avoidable cost.
Now businesses are moving over to electronic invoicing and payments. There are now invoicing systems that include the option to pay electronically by card on the invoice itself.
Cloud-Based Software
Finally, businesses can save money by taking advantage of free, cloud-based software. Google Apps provides free groupware that allows companies to share and create documents. And Zoho affords companies many tools to expand their business in a variety of ways.
Ritik Singh
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Sarah Williams
Rachita Kotian