Running your own online business may have been your long-time ambition, but as time has gone by, you are likely to find many problems you never anticipated when you first drew up your business plan. This can mean that your business may be stuck in a state of limbo as you go around in circles trying to find solutions to problems you are poorly equipped to deal with.
In situations like this, you may be wise to turn to technology to try and fill in a few of the gaps in your skills. However, it is not uncommon for many easy tech solutions to go undiscovered because people didn’t know they existed.
Inhouse training software
You might find one of the big problems you have is training your staff to keep up with the latest developments in your industry. Not only that, but the time you need to learn and teach these new discoveries affects both their productivity and yours.
Using training software to help with the basic onboarding and standard company training might not be a new idea to you, but it can take some of the weight from your shoulders. What might surprise you is that tools exist online to create your own bespoke course, teaching them the finer points of their jobs. You can update this regularly, so you are limiting the disruption by recording these and having a set time for them to play ‘catch up’ each week. This also frees you to get on with running your business instead of repeating the same information each time you take on somebody new.
Use APIs to get your software working together
You might find that you need several pieces of software to run your business. This can include packages to help with payroll or HR software. While they work quite well independently, life would be a whole lot easier if they could actually talk to each other so that you could automate tasks and save lots of ‘double handling’ of data.
APIs allow these software packages to communicate with each other. By finding an API gateway open source solution, you can make this whole process easier for any developers you have on board. This can make outdated processes a thing of the past, and ensure your staff are not wasting time having to switch between databases to complete simple tasks.
Finding the right courier and shipping solutions
Getting your product to the customer is all important, as they will only order from you again if it arrives in one piece and on time. To achieve this, you will need different solutions for the different types of products you send – especially if some of them are quite oversized or delicate.
By searching job boards online to find the right delivery or shipping partner for different products, you can get a specialist courier who will take care of the product and ensure the whole customer experience is positive. This can do much for online reviews, which can not only help you attract more customers but turn those time first-time buyers into repeat customers – which are the best type of customers to have.