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An article in the Financial Post says you need to think differently when it comes to finding and retaining staff. It presents some good ideas for improving your recruitment activities.

The population is aging and fewer young people are entering the labour force. That will keep happening over the next 10 years

Pierre Cléroux, chief economist BDC

Finding and retaining staff is critical to every business and as this article indicates, it’s difficult and will not become better any time soon. The article talks about the supply side of people but what are you doing on your side?

Finding people is only one part of the equation. What are you doing to achieve business success with the same number of people or fewer people? What are you doing to be more efficient, more effective and increase business velocity while making your business a place where people want to be?

Digital Transformation is Critical to SMB Success

Are you implementing your digital transformation strategy? If you are not, download this infographic from IDC for a roadmap of digital transformation. It delivers a quick insight into what that strategy should look like and how it helps boost business innovation and growth.

Download Plan Your Digital Roadmap

IDC says that in 2019 50% of SMBs see digital transformation a critical feature of their company’s growth strategy.

Why Digital Transformation?

Although they might not like to admit it, many SMBs have legacy ERP systems and they are struggling. Their on-premise system is slow, rigid and is not integrated. Their software needs lots of manual entry and is short on sophisticated data analysis capabilities. This is causing SMBs to need to hire and retain more people for work that people no longer want to do. How many people have you lost to “better opportunities” but were really lost because you have old, outdated software?

Although they might not like to admit it, many SMBs have legacy ERP systems and they are struggling.

Legacy ERP systems are forcing SMBs to retain archaic business processes. These systems don’t offer interoperability, don’t offer real time updates for the entire team (including those in the field) and can’t be customized to meet unique business needs. This is the technical debt that SMBs have accumulated.

Digital technology and a modern digital platform are a requirement for success. They provide the flexible, powerful core that connects internal and external processes. Fifty-four percent of SMBs are focused on digital transformation to engage external and internal resources for maximum effectiveness.

As IDC’s infographic clearly shows with their digital roadmap, digital transformation isn’t a one and done endeavour. Digital transformation is a journey. The digital transformation journey is not achieved with a single change or by a single group in a business. While the drive for and emphasis on digital transformation should come from the company leadership, the entire company must understand and embrace the changes that will occur during digital transformation. SMBs that create a corporate culture of embracing digital transformation greatly increase their chances of success.

From the c-suite leadership team to the front-line people, every employee should understand why adopting digital technologies such as cloud ERP software and other technologies such as AI, robotics and modern security are critical to exchanging data across the company, meeting customers’ and employees’ modern expectations and creating innovation. Automatically exchanging data across the organization leaves more time for people to use the information to make strategic, effective decisions. Everyone needs to know that the changes created by using cloud and SaaS software will ultimately bring growth and create a better place to work.

Digital transformation requires a solid technology foundation and a clear strategy. A clear digital strategy requires asking the right questions, setting clear goals, establishing the steps to achieve those goals and obtaining input from people throughout the business. To keep the transformation moving forward people will need regular informational and training sessions. While each business and each industry will have different requirements and possibly different approaches throughout the process, they all want the same result: digital transformation (DX) success.

IDC states that 57.1% of businesses want more agility and speed from their technology systems. If you are one of these businesses (you should be if you are not), then you need to begin your DX process, and you should start now. As you have seen, the rate that technology changes is rapid and it won’t decrease. The more you wait the further you fall being those who have already begun their digital transformation and have adopted agile, integrated technology such as cloud, mobile, social and analytics/big data.

Download IDC’s infographic today and get the digital roadmap that will help guide you to your future business success.

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