As a UK Govt advisor urges businesses to reduce prices, how could workplace technology help?

With the Bank of England expecting inflation to exceed 11% in October, the UK Government’s cost-of-living tsar has urged businesses to do more to rein in prices for UK households.

David Buttress, a former Just Eat chief executive, explained in words quoted by Reuters that some of the money “spent on marketing and doing deals” should be refocused on “what really matters to people which is making their prices more competitive so their money goes further.”

In any case, your business might be able to slash costs by implementing any of the following corporate techs.

Cloud computing

If your office has many filing cabinets filled with paperwork and documents, you could be pleasantly surprised by how much you benefit from switching to cloud storage instead.

Though certain cloud services do incur a monthly fee, you could make back that money and then some as a result of your company’s cloud transition boosting productivity and minimizing stress. Cloud computing apps also conveniently update themselves.

Microsoft Teams

You need some digital means of keeping in touch with co-workers — primarily if some of them are split between offices or simply working from home.

Hence the rationale for using workplace communication software like Microsoft Teams — which, as PCMag UK explains, is even available for free.

Meanwhile, the enterprise telecoms firm Gamma can assist you in powering Microsoft Teams telephony and consequently providing your team with access to free calls.

Automation and AI

Contrary to what Google could lead you to think with its CAPTCHAs, offices up and down the country aren’t exactly populated with robot workers. However, you can still introduce a large degree of automation to many of your business processes.

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can handle various tasks once only left to humans; think the likes of organizing inboxes, managing payments and invoices, and inputting data.

Automating such routines can help you to reduce overhead costs and, unsurprisingly, the number of human workers you would otherwise have to pay for.

CRM software

Naturally, as a business, you want to not only attract customers but also keep as many of them as possible for the long run. However, if you are eager to foster increased loyalty in your customers, you need a good understanding of what drives them in their buying habits.

Customer relationship management (CRM) can help you to do all of this. It bodes well for the usefulness of CRM software that the market is on course to amass more than $80 billion in revenue by 2025, as SME News reports.

Webinars

What are webinars? The word ‘webinars’ almost answers the question, as they are web-based seminars. Therefore, they can do many of the same things as traditional, in-person seminars — except that they are held online, a difference with positive implications for your business finances.

For example, you could use webinars to share ideas and engage in networking without needing to book a venue or hire a caterer in preparation. Also, no one would need to travel a long distance simply to participate.