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Op-Ed: Tech is ‘key factor’ to secure success of SME’s

Author Carlos Sarmiento, is regional vice-president of Oracle Digital.

Every business, regardless of the size, industry or business sector, faces different challenges and obstacles during its life cycle. As a result, business objectives, priorities and strategies will change as it evolves.

The majority used to rely exclusively on good decision-making to face their challenges, but that is no longer the reality. Technology is now a key factor to help secure business success.

In today’s market, the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector, like many others, drive businesses to search for innovative and fast solutions that help reduce costs and store information in a safe way.

One of the challenges they face is the growing amount of data, as it is increasingly difficult to manage through documents, emails and other traditional services. Consequently, many SMEs have resorted to cloud technology. Here are some of the answers to frequently asked questions:

  1. What should you do? – Your first step should be to identify what are the general costs to maintain your business such as rent, equipment, infrastructure, electricity, etc. If you want to reduce some of these, please know that automated workflow processes could be the answer. SMEs that have automated their processes of finance, human resources and sales/services have boosted labor productivity by up to 20 percent, increased capacity and improved their clients’ experience.
  1. What happens when technology is implemented to manage daily operations?
  • Employees manage processes from a single-stand-point of control, facilitating the change of infrastructure and eliminating the possibilities of human error.
  • Streamlines communication, supporting an organized collaboration
  • Provides visibility of the entire administrative system through a series of autonomous reports.
  1. How to start?
  • List each manual task involved in your business operations
  • Identify the department that handles each of these tasks
  • Detail all steps necessary for the workflow
  • Identify excessiveness, repetitive tasks and operational costs
  • Determine if automatization can facilitate, improve or accelerate your processes
  • After you identify the areas to automate, you would need to decide if your current technological platform and software can handle this level of automation.
  • Monitor its performance
    • Establish performance indicators and objectives
    • Monitor tasks and identify any unforeseen issues
    • Add, delete or adapt tasks to increase productivity

All companies are complex, regardless of their size, and contain a diverse set of functions and technological needs that should respond to (short and long term) commercial objectives and clients’ needs/expectations.

By incorporating cloud technology, companies support their growth, which can be translated into an operational transformation and remain competitive, while expanding future opportunities.

 

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece is NOT paid advertising.

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This story was written by our staff based on a press release.
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