Using technology to its maximum capacity, along with old-fashioned, mom-and-pop customer service, is what business has to do to grow in 2013 and beyond, a business consultant says.
When Dale Rothenberger consulted with business operators, increasing sales and profits and improving the efficiencies of the business topped priorities.
"There is an entire element of business intelligence that folks are looking for in the marketplace - a cross-breed of taking technologies today and applying them to the real business world," Mr. Rothenberger, regional sales manager for Reading-based Zee Medical Services, told those who attended a seminar at the Greater Hazleton Chamber of Commerce recently.
"Unless you're in one of those growing, fast-evolving, technology aspects of business, you're struggling. The question is I can't reinvent what my business is, so how can I reinvent the market that I serve? Taking game-setting differences and applying them in 2013 is finding different answers to the same questions."
Mr. Rothenberger said in the last three to five years, technology has had a huge impact on how business does business.
"What businesses have done during recessionary times is reduce their cost and look for smarter ways to get things done," he said. "They've invested in technology, so the technology is doing many of the functions in businesses a human being used to do. They've been able to reduce their human resource requirement to get the same level of production."
Technology has to be combined with customer service to differentiate one business from another today.
"The technology gives us oodles and oodles of data," he said. "Having that data is one thing. Knowing what to do with that data is how we draw power out of it. Almost 20 percent of sales last year came from products less than three years old. One out of four businesses are going out to their customer base and asking what can I do better to have my firm help your business grow."
Contact the writer: jdino@standardspeaker.com