In the fast-changing world of digital agencies, staying up-to-date means staying on top of technology trends. If you're an IT manager aiming to keep your company in the lead, your role is all about adopting the latest technologies and smoothly fitting them into your day-to-day work.
Today's IT professionals are more than just problem solvers. They guide their companies through the complex world of technology, helping them to stay ahead of the game.
Whether you're a marketing agency, a law firm, or a business consulting agency, it's crucial to assess your technology portfolio, boost staff training, and draw inspiration from success stories of tech adoption. But what does technology adoption look like, and how can it be brought to life in your company?
More often than not, IT departments lead the charge regarding technology adoption. With the support of tools like Elorus, you can unlock the benefits and inspiring success narratives of effective tech integration.
The impacts of adopting new technology in a service-based company
With a smartly laid-out technology adoption strategy, you can see rapid returns and near-immediate impacts across your business. Whether improving your services or enhancing overall digital security, understanding how new tech can impact your service-based company can help you influence your colleagues to buy a new tech solution or increase corporate buy-in.
Increased efficiency
New technology adoption can automate time-consuming tasks such as project management, time-tracking, invoicing, and data collection. These gains, in turn, free up your employees to focus on providing top-tier services to clients and partner companies.
Improved service delivery
Consistency, data reliability, and more acute insights can help you leverage data to improve service delivery. Any service based company can employ new technology platforms to gain more granular insights into their business performance, leading to more reliable services and stronger agency-client relationship.
Enhanced communication and collaboration
Newer software tools can help you streamline and enhance communication while enabling global collaboration. IT managers of distributed workplaces understand how important centralized communication can be for functional, successful teams.
Cost saving
Technology can help you spot process improvements, workflow bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas of opportunity, which can directly translate into cost savings for your business. You may be spending too much time on invoicing and missing out on potential expansion opportunities, or your current platforms may not show a complete view of your incoming data, causing you to miss out on performance improvements.
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Increased revenue and scalability
The right software solutions and technology improvements can scale alongside your business and help you increase revenue. Combining cost savings with greater automation potential and more reliable data points allows you to grow your brand smartly and sustainably.
Competitive advantages
Businesses have greater access to data and new technology than ever before. How they use these tools can often define their successes or failures. New technology offers better access to data that can inform critical business decisions alongside competitive advantages related to efficiency gains and growth potential.
Improved security
Many software platforms an IT manager might propose will come standard with robust encryption tools and security features. This simplifies managing sensitive client information and financial data and helps you build a reputation as a trustworthy service provider.
Employee satisfaction
You will likely see improvements in overall employee satisfaction by eliminating redundant tasks, automating time-consuming processes, streamlining communication, and reducing employee overworking possibilities.
New technology adoption best practices for IT managers
Since IT managers are often the most likely to suggest new technology platforms and solutions, they must come to each proposal with clear intentions, a solid business case, and a way to track performance.
Have clear goals and objectives
What is the purpose of implementing new technology in your business? Are you looking to streamline existing processes? Will a new platform improve your services and client relations? Before investing in new tech, define your goals and objectives, both in the short and long term.
Build your business case
Do your research and identify the top solutions. This means gathering information about your existing technology limitations and bottlenecks, the potential solutions, and the pros and cons of each new technology adoption strategy. Once you have identified the top solutions, you can do a SWOT analysis or use a similar strengths assessment. After that, you can structure a solid implementation plan. This plan should include the steps you’ll take to implement the solution, the resources you’ll need, and the timeline for implementation.
Communicate your business case to stakeholders
Come prepared with costs, analyses, and projections to help you explain the short and long-term ramifications of investing in a new technology solution. Be sure to specify whether it's a subscription-based model or a one-time investment, a detail that can be reviewed later as your company expands.
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Conduct a pilot program
Mid-sized and large companies often initiate technology adoption on a small scale before rolling it out to the entire company. Usually, an IT manager does this to avoid disrupting internal processes. Thus, the new technology is first implemented at a departmental level. The company then monitors its impact on current processes and workflows before proceeding with full-scale adoption at the company level.
Review and adjust
Take the time to track user progress, gain insights from training, and find out what is and isn’t working for trainers and trainees. Not everyone on your team will have the same tech aptitude, familiarity, or comfort, so you must adjust your new technology adoption training approaches over time. In addition, you should consistently review your company’s performance against your KPIs and make any necessary changes. Also, source feedback from your employees and clients to determine how technology is working in practice and that it’s still meeting your needs.
Don't cut corners when it comes to training
Create training materials in various formats — such as videos, walkthroughs, tooltips, in-app training, PDFs, or live online courses — to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical staff. You should base the training format on the nature of the new technology you introduce.
Ensure security and compliance
You should ensure the security of your company's or client's data. Especially in law firms and consulting firms, there are often specific regulations about data management, client confidentiality, and other aspects of technology use. Technology managers must ensure their firms' systems and practices are in compliance with these regulations. For example, Elorus software, which processes sensitive client data, is certified with ISO 27001. This certification demonstrates that Elorus has implemented robust security measures to protect customer data.
While this isn’t necessarily an exhaustive list of best practices, you can use these tips to level out the technology adoption curve and make getting employees up to speed easier.
Technology adoption examples
What does it look like when a service based business successfully navigates new technology adoption? Elorus has experience helping companies implement and leverage our software to its maximum potential.
Constantly tracking work time in a mid-sized law firm
By using Elorus's time-tracking features, a well-established law firm increased its productivity and income significantly. Prior to adopting our platform, the firm struggled with recording work time accurately, and the absence of historical performance data occasionally led to inaccuracies in their service costing.
By leveraging the detailed service costing, accurate time tracking (which includes both billable and non-billable hours), and comprehensive invoicing features of the Elorus platform, Koutalidis Law Firm was able to speed up its invoicing process and enhance its turnover.
Effectively managing the company’s finances of a post-production team
Before using Elorus, a post-production agency was in need of a reliable and intuitive way to manage the company’s finances. In addition, the agency was looking for project analysis tools to allow for more precise cost accounting for services.
By adopting the Elorus business technology platform, CandyshopVFX has been able to readily view detailed reports of the company’s financial data, cost services as needed, and efficiently manage expenses and invoices.
Elorus can help you make the most of technology across your business
If you’re an IT manager looking for a comprehensive business technology platform to empower your service based company, Elorus can aid you with new technology adoption. Our all-inclusive business software offers access to time-tracking, invoicing, expense management, and reporting tools to help you maximize your data, increase buy-in, and improve service delivery.
