Time is money. Any business trying to scale will tell you the importance of being efficient and working smarter, not harder. It’s why business enablement has been such a buzz-worthy topic among offices the last couple of years. Similar to sales enablement empowering sales teams, business enablement is designed to help companies thrive.
Not sure how? Getting the conversation started is just the first step. But it’s important to understand what business enablement is, and how your company can apply it to existing processes and workflows.
What Is Business Enablement?
What is business enablement? In layman's terms, business enablement is adopting initiatives that lean into technology-driven processes. The main purpose? Employee productivity. When properly executed, business enablement should kill inefficiencies in employee’s workflows by decreasing manual work while increasing output.
Not every company can afford to add to their headcount in order to produce more results. Business enablement helps bridge the gap between small, scrappy teams by allowing them to get more done, faster. It’s something that all teams could benefit from, but is especially important for startups and small businesses.
How innovative companies are working smarter
Leadership and upper management can evaluate what their teams need based on which projects are taking up the biggest chunks of their time. Business enablement will look different for every company but the following five tips are a good place to start.
Utilize smart software
Technology is the number one thing driving business enablement forward, but it requires teams to take advantage of smart software and artificial intelligence. Utilizing smart software can give teams back more time by handling tedious tasks like scheduling, design, and optimization. There are so many brilliant softwares out there that can help teams achieve more without breaking the bank.
When it comes to presentations, out-dated software is doing teams a disservice. Nearly every professional can acknowledge the time it takes to build a deck from scratch without having a background in design. PowerPoint alternatives— like Beautiful.ai— offer smart technologies to make presentations less of a chore and more efficient. Pre-built templates get you started while Smart Slides handle the heavy lifting of design so you can create something brilliant in half the time.
Saving files to the cloud
Saving files to a hard drive is so 2010. What happens when an employee inevitably moves on? Management is stuck spending hours offloading their computer of any pertinent files needed to train the next person. On the same coin, scouring computer files for one singular document or presentation for a colleague can be a time-suck. When things are saved to the cloud, teams can find them quicker without running the risk of losing files. This also allows for more seamless collaboration as files can be transferred and shared with a single click as opposed to lengthy email chains of various revisions. In the cloud everything is automatically saved so you know you’re working in the most updated version, all the time.
Automating processes
Business enablement at its core is eliminating repetitive tasks that kill efficiency. Unlocking automated processes not only frees up big chunks of teams’ bandwidths, but it can help increase the effectiveness of a project. There are more things than you might think that can be automated to help alleviate the pressure of deadlines. From design automations, to proofreading tools, there’s a good chance you can ditch some of your manual (and mundane) tasks.
Beautiful.ai removes the tedious part of design that can create bottlenecks for teams. Design AI takes on the burden of aligning text boxes, choosing the right font sizes, resizing images, and applying branding. Gone are the days of manually tinkering with elements on the slides, smart presentation software automates the process for you.
Enabling better collaboration
You’ve heard the saying: teamwork makes the dream work. Well, teamwork is a key component to business enablement. That means that teams who encourage collaboration are setting themselves up for success. But simply advocating for collaboration isn’t enough. In a 2021 survey, respondents said they were equally troubled by other contributors' workflows, communication, and version control. To enable better collaboration, businesses should give their teams access to softwares and tools that unlock better communication and integrate with existing workflows so that they can work in tandem without unnecessary bottlenecks.
Measure real vs. expected outcomes
If you’re not learning, you’re not growing. That applies to business enablement, too. Since your team is relying on technology to pick up some slack, it’s important to measure the success of those processes. What were your expectations? Are you exceeding expectations or falling short? These metrics can help you decide what’s working, what might require more resources, and what needs to be tweaked.
