By Legal Futures Associate Advanced
One way and another, these are tough times to be in business. Which is why every business should do all it can to be resilient.
This means being robust, to ride out the turbulence – and always being proactive to anticipate change and maintain competitiveness. Technology doesn’t have all the answers. But certainly, technical solutions can help businesses to increase their resilience immeasurably.
All firms need to maximise their staff productivity to achieve more with less. The reality is that there are not always enough people, and technology improves efficiency, risk management and makes for better ways of working. To be more robust, you need to save time and money by working smarter.
Technology can drive greater efficiency by ensuring that the information people need to complete tasks is readily to hand. For example, it can help inform sound financial management and enable powerful data analytics that can identify areas for improvement.
It can revolutionise simple, repetitive tasks such as invoicing or contract renewals by automating them.
Tech can also make you more proactive by stripping out other costly, outdated practices and reengineering processes and workflows. For example, why create separate conveyance forms for SDLT and Companies House when a technology exists to automate their production and digitally submits to the appropriate Government Agencies.
This removes the effort of physically obtaining forms, filling them in and posting them. It’s cheaper, quicker and more secure – plus it removes the risk that you’re not using the latest form version.
Making the most of technology can also put you on the front foot by increasing revenue. A case in point is software that ensures that all fee earner activity is captured and therefore, clients are being billed accurately for all billable time.
In addition, technology can improve satisfaction with your customers, improving service levels, delivering online experience for important updates 24 hours a day. Portals are readily available, deliver an engaging customer experience and are significantly more secure than email.
All businesses are struggling to retain and attract talent. When modern, slick, intuitive software is deployed it can help with attracting and retaining high-quality staff. An example is the reliable virtual private networks (VPNs) that support secure locations for remote working.
In turbulent times, technology can underpin a competitive resilience that makes all the difference between merely surviving – and thriving.
