You don’t have to wait until spring to spring clean your business. It’s all too easy to download lots of apps, sign up to lots of newsletters and spend time and effort on old, outdated ways. Perhaps it’s worth clearing out the junk, looking at how you work and maybe starting afresh.

Technology in particular can often be more of a hindrance than a help. Check out our tips on how you can get technology to work for you rather than against you.

1. Remember who’s the boss

Technology should be working for you, not the other way around. If you’re spending more time entering data or figuring out how an application works rather than running your business then perhaps that application is not right for you. Take the plunge and delete it, there’s plenty of other apps out there.

2. Time to Unsubscribe

It’s easy to get distracted by everything that’s going on in the world. Whether you sign up for news apps or newsletters which looked interesting at the time. If you’re spending all your time reading news rather than creating news, then perhaps its time to unsubscribe from some newsletters or drop some of those apps.
You can also work smarter with your emails and texts. Rather than continuously checking your emails, why not check them once a day. If they are important you will likely get a call anyway but most not that important.

3. Don’t get tied down

Smartphones, tablets, laptops and wi-fi all allow you to work whenever and wherever you want. This allows you to spend time away from the office, you can visit customers, get inspiration or even just get time away to think.

Most emails are now opened on mobiles,  so use technology to communicate when it suits you, when you are traveling between meetings rather than when you should be thinking about other things.

4. Embrace the cloud

The cloud can give you a competitive advantage and bring long-term value to your small business. It gives you access to the IT benefits previously only available to larger businesses.

Cloud solutions offer the storage, security and flexibility you need to grow your business. It can help reduce your IT costs, improve reliability so you spend less time fixing issues and although people are wary about security, cloud computing can actually increase your security as the latest fixes and updates are managed by a professional company who are continuously monitoring the latest security trends and advances..

5. Save time and money with the latest apps

Apps can make light work of some of the tedious admin chores of running a business and free you up to focus on what really matters – your customers. They can also help you to find who those customers are and communicate with them better.

There’s a huge choice of apps to help you keep track of time, manage your jobs and remote workers, ease invoicing and get to where you need to be..
Apps are also a great way for small business owners to keep up to date on the latest news and views in their sector. Although make sure you don’t end up getting distracted with all the news that’s out there.

6. Create better conversations

Integrating your social media and sales can help you to understand your customers and communicate with them. Social media can also help you reach a wider audience at little cost (at least in monetary terms). Social media can also hope you create word of mouth recommendations, gather testimonials or garner feedback.

Do these tips work for you? How do you use technology to help you grow your business? I’d love to hear ideas and experiences and share them with other small businesses. Please tweet us at @ok_ppy.