Turn to tech for time and cost-saving strategies

(NC) Whether you commute to an office, run your own business, or occasionally work from home, today’s tech solutions can help improve your work-life balance and smooth out your daily tasks.
Turning to tech is also one way to cut costs and increase profit margins, while at the same time improving your operations. Enterprise organizations often call this digital transformation, and it’s just as important for smaller businesses to adopt new technology practices.
How do you get started? Follow these cost-cutting best practices to ensure you’re leveraging technology to its full potential:
Do less commuting and travelling. All that mileage and flying adds up. Use Skype for Business, a video conferencing tool that helps you run polished and efficient meetings without having to be in the same room.
Get rid of old servers. Are you still taking care of your own hardware? Instead of buying, configuring and managing servers, use cloud services for storage and tools.
Share office space. If you run a business, instead of leasing your own office space, consider an office-sharing arrangement that gives you internet access, a boardroom and work spaces. This modern work arrangement is becoming increasingly popular, with designated workspaces popping up in neighbourhoods everywhere.
 
Buff up your security. Cyberattacks such as hacks and malware can disrupt businesses and result in damages. Move to a cloud-based service to help improve your security.
 
Automate back-ups. Time equals money, so if you’re still spending precious minutes handling your data backups manually, you’re wasting money. Look for an option to automate the process by moving your data to the cloud.
 
Look for custom website work arounds. Building a custom website can cost a lot and you also need to factor in maintenance costs. Depending on your business needs, it may make financial sense to use a website building tool that offers inexpensive templates that still look professional. The other option is social media — leverage popular networks to share news and information.
 
Consider a pay-as-you-go option. Instead of paying traditional software and hardware licensing fees based on estimates of your needs, try cloud services like Microsoft 365 where you only pay for what you use.