As a startup, your primary concern is to start generating revenue and steadily grow it. All the hundreds of startup founders located at all the Evoma Business Centers in Bangalore, aided by their capable teams, work harder than most corporate executives.
But that doesn’t necessarily ensure success. Neither does chasing more and more sales leads and taking on more work than you can do. After you get to a certain stage where you’re poised for growth, you need to take a step back and reexamine your process and plug the gaps in efficiency and automation.
Even if you think you have it all covered, take a look at these software categories and systems. If you’re not using all of them, then you stand to increase startup revenue by up to 277%.
1. Cloud software – 79%
Cloud software is now so common that you don’t even notice. This includes everything from your mail servers (Gmail for business) to Productivity Suites (Google Docs, Spread Sheets, Slides) and storage (Dropbox, Google Drive). But have you taken your entire IT infrastructure and moved it to the cloud?
If not, get it done right now because comprehensive use of cloud software can increase startup revenue by up to 79%. Move team collaboration to Slack and/or Asana. Move infographic creation to Canva. Get rid of all your on-premise servers and computer hardware and software. Everything in it can be accessed as a service, as SaaS (software as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), and/or IaaS (infrastructure as a service).
2. Mobile and tablet access to data – 28%
If you’re getting rid of all your on-site hardware and software, then software and data should be accessible from anywhere. Follow up on point 1 above, and give your teams Tablets and access to cloud software and data, so they can work from anywhere, at any time. Their productivity, individually and as a team, will shoot up very quickly. Expect a startup to increase revenue by up to 28% by allowing your teams the freedom to work from anywhere.
3. IoT – 15.6%
Your company, product or solution is not an island. It is part of the Internet of Things (IoT), or at least should be – if you want your customers to be able to use what you provide as part of a broader system.
If you make a lock that cannot be controlled remotely, then it’s not part of a home security system which is managed and monitored remotely by the provider. Adding this IoT compatibility to your startup product or solution will increase your revenue by an average of 15.6%.
4. Cloud Telephony – 30%
Providing instant response tools such as livechat or cloud telephony software (we use Lucep.com) will increase lead generation by up to 47% and increase conversions and revenue by up to 30%.
5. CRM – 41%
If you’re doing all of the above and getting more leads, then lead management becomes a concern. If you’re using Excel sheets to enter lead data across multiple locations like the Evoma Business Centers in Bangalore, then collecting all of them and handing over the leads to the sales team to follow up becomes almost impossible to manage.
So you decide to put all of it into a centralized database that will get rid of much of the data entry and replication of entries, and provide notifications to the sales team as and when needed that they need to take some action on a specific lead. That’s what we’re doing at Evoma, by making use of the lead management capabilities of Hubspot, a free CRM.
Just doing this (lead management), without even factoring in other CRM features such as lead scoring and integrations, will increase a growing startup’s revenue by 41%.
6. Marketing automation – 34%
If you now have a CRM smoothly managing all the leads flowing in fro your website and other channels, then it’s time to make it work seamlessly by implementing marketing automation. The cloud telephony system mentioned above is one part of it, but it only becomes automation when you integrate it with your CRM.
So get all the website, social media, email marketing and other lead generation tools you want in place. Then get a CRM. Then integrate all these tools with your CRM, so that all the leads from all channels flow smoothly into your CRM while you’re sleeping. That’s marketing automation, and will increase revenue by up to 34%.
7. Accounting – 50%
You may be doing everything above perfectly, and it may be getting you a steady flow of new customers and sales. But lack of a proper business structure, accounting and bookkeeping means that you could be losing up to 50% of your revenue without knowing it.
How can you fix this? Get a solid GST-ready accounting package, and hire a chartered accounting intern for in-house book-keeping, while also getting your accounts audited properly by a good CA. If you pair an in-house accounting professional and software with an outside CA, and you’ll find your revenue shooting up by 50% as the finances become clear and transparent.
References:
1. Cost of Server Ownership: On-Premise vs. IaaS – Sherweb
2. How to increase revenue by using a tablet – Oracle
3. TCS Global Trend study on IoT – Dataquest
4. Improved Call Handling Increased Revenues by 30% – Exotel
5. CRM Statistics Show Why it’s a Powerful Marketing Weapon – IBM
6. Marketing automation stats infographic – Pardot
7. How to increase business revenue by 16 percent – Xero