What Is Businesstek?

You want your business to grow, to be efficient and represent the distinctive strategic advantage which sets you and your company apart from all the other wannabes. Okay, while that is easy enough to say, how do you do it? Let’s look at the three statements in the first sentence.

Growing your company takes in a lot of territory. You can grow in geography, in sales avenues, in product lines and — if you aren’t careful — in costs. In some of those areas, technology decisions play a leading role: if you want to become an online sales leader, you better have the right tech. In some of those decisions, technology plays a supporting role: picking the right tool for customer resource management, salesforce compensation and advertising lead management can be the difference between profit and loss on the balance sheet.

Efficiency. Is your company efficient? Do you have a way to measure productivity? Are you able to concentrate your resources against the tasks that are the most profitable for you? What about your basic operating expenses including power, heat, cooling, fuel usage? In an era of $4 a gallon gas, you want to make sure that every mile driven by your staff is taken in the most efficient manner. You might be able to build an efficient company without technology, but I don’t think you could keep your firm running efficiently without the capability to measure, monitor and produce constant productivity improvements. All that requires technology.

Strategic advantage. The words “strategic advantage” have launched thousands of consulting careers. There is no other term that can mean so much or so little. How does your company differentiate itself from the competition: service, geographic scope or — and be careful here — price? How does your definition of your company’s strategic qualities align with what your customers are saying about you?

In some cases technology can give you a strategic advantage as in business web “mashups” which take data from lots of sources and provide a service which was once either difficult or impossible for your customers to achieve. An example would be Progressive Insurance which uses the web to show competitive car insurance quotes and also to support mobile insurance adjusters which can price, authorize and write you a check all in one visit.