How to incorporate tech into your business

Marilyn says: “Technology is absolutely amazing but the question you need to ask is, what is the most efficient means of doing this task? Because if you are getting yourself tied up in knots just to try and use technology, that is not a good thing. There are times when you need to just pick up the phone or send an email. I have seen people struggle with technology when actually they could have done a task very simply in a fraction of the time.”

Marilyn says: “If you are struggling to do something, nine and a half times out of ten some clever technologist has already sat down and created the thing that is going to do what you want to do. Technology is not infallible - I haven’t yet met a piece of kit that does exactly 100% everything I want it to do. But there is going to be something there that is pretty close.”

Marilyn says: “If you are introducing new technology into your business, do proper walk throughs. Get people on Zoom, share your screen and show them how to login. Then do some screen shots via pdf for people who are a little more old-school. Make it as easy as you can for people. If you are bringing in a technological process which previously was done manually, tell people why, rather than just saying, we have to do it this way now. If you have efficiency studies which show how the new technology will speed up your processes or reduce mistakes, then tell people about it, so even if they are not happy about it, they will at least understand why you are introducing it.”

Marilyn says: “It used to be the case that you could break something if you did the wrong thing - if you plugged the disk in before the printer or whatever you could mess up the whole system. But nowadays you can pretty much press buttons and not doing anything too drastic because there is an undo button. And with some business software, there is often a mock version provided as part of it, so you can have a play around and know that you will not damage anything because you are locked out of the main system.”

Marilyn says: “The technology is probably not going to do exactly what you want it to do straight away because there is a learning curve. People might be resistant to it and they might even try to break it. It is also going to be a bit clunky because people don’t know how to use it, and there might be bugs in the software.”

Marilyn says: “Bolt-ons can be a great way for small businesses to add on functionality but once you start to scale, you can find yourself with several bits of software that are bolted together and it can be really time consuming trying to get everything to work seamlessly together. Once you get to this stage it might be worth going back and looking at the tech and seeing if there is a complete package solution that will do what you want it to do.” If that’s too big an investment, it is also worth looking at integration software to connect your apps and systems more seamlessly.

Marilyn says: “If the technology isn’t doing what it is supposed to do, don’t be afraid to go back to the developers and ask them to look at, particularly if it is a start-up business providing the software, as they may be open to having discussions about how to improve it. Microsoft may not listen to you but the start-up that has just done their first round of funding might. You could even say, how do I do this? Sometimes they will say that is a great idea, we will build it into the software.”