The 21st-century has been labeled the Digital Age. It’s no secret that technology is an integral part of every Westerners’ daily life. There is simply no escaping the incredible innovations that hit the market every six months. 

The following article outlines four reasons to invest in quality technology early on in your company’s startup. Technology can be used to serve you, but if you don’t use it your competitors will leave you in the dust.

Low Overhead For Greater Revenue

The typical drawback to investing in quality technology in the beginning of a start up has to do with the cost. However, if you want to reach your consumers in a timely manner you need to have technology which keeps up with the speeds that their phones and laptops produce. You wouldn’t try to use dial-up Internet connection to upload a YouTube video—at least, we hope you wouldn’t. This is impractical and let’s be honest, by the time the video gets uploaded it’ll be 2020.

Investing in good Wi-Fi, up-to-date computers, product management softwares and the like will greatly increase your productivity speeds. Greater productivity speeds ultimately produce saved time and money as well as greater consumer interaction. These inevitably produce more revenue, and those low overhead costs are forgotten.

Greater Consumer Interaction

Not only does up-to-date technology make interacting with social media of breeze— thank you, smart phones—good quality technology allows you the opportunity to keep a constant dialogue open with your consumers. Integrating chat bots onto your webpages allows consumers to have their questions answered while freeing up your employees from answering the same question again and again. This ensures that when customers call to ask questions, your employees are answering more challenging questions. This also helps narrow down leads who are actually interested in buying.

Additionally, using up-to-date technology allows you to create incredible content to interact with your consumers. Social media is not just a place where you post sales and hope consumers will click on your advertisement. Social media is a place where you post educational content to engage with your consumers on a personal level. By answering their questions through infographics, blog posts or instructional YouTube videos, you set your brand apart as an industry expert. This can only be done through up-to-date tools which allow you to stay ahead of the game.

Remote Collaboration

The beauty of electronic content is that it allows consumers to access your content 24/7 wherever they are. However, this remote access is also incredible for optimizing your employees’ overall productivity. Whether you have remote employees or in office employees, remote collaboration is huge in on business startups. Not only does it allow employees to access emails and do Zoom conferences from anywhere in the world, but it also allows employees the opportunity to collaborate on projects at anytime of the day. While most employees work 9 to 5, several workers prefer flexible hours because they are night owls or early birds. Remote access creates a unique opportunity for launching your business from a small start up to something big.

Cloud Sharing

One of the most efficient ways to promote remote collaboration is through the use of cloud sharing. By organizing and placing your projects into a cloud like OneDrive, not only will your data be safe from network crashes, but it will also be accessible to your team 24/7 no matter their location. So if a team member is stuck on a long commute on the train, they can be working on their section of the project. Cloud sharing allows real-time updates to be made at any moment. Combine this technology with mobile printing technology, and you have data saved, developed, and produced all from a remote location—yet still safely tucked away in the office printer tray for tomorrow morning’s meeting. 

Employees do not need to be working around the clock to use cloud sharing as an effective means. Yet, since they have access to this information at any time, they can put their ideas in at the moment of inspiration rather than when they’re sitting in an office chair. Often times the best inspiration strikes when we’re at the gym or just out and about living daily life.

Overall investing in technology improves employee productivity, improves customer interaction, and improve the spirit of collaboration among your team members. The low overhead of investment is virtually nothing when compared with the time and revenue these tools will produce for your small startup.