From the COVID pandemic to now, it seems like there was this black hole in time. What we knew before as normal life changed dramatically, and anyone doing business the same way today, using the same assumptions as before, needs to reexamine everything if they are to grow and profit. When we add the challenges of new technologies, this compels dealers to ensure that our vendors and business partners are experts in providing efficient internal digital operations systems and scaling new business projects with the latest in digital marketing platforms and tools.
Building a Business Tool for the Digital Era
Last October, Washington, D.C.-area Sight and Sound Systems, Inc. (SASSI) held a builder and designer event held called a Taste of Technology. Because of COVID restrictions, they had not hosted this event for a few years. Â
As a long-term member of CEDIA and nearly 20 years as a member of the AiN Group, SASSI continues to utilize expertise from key vendors, including collaborating on occasions such as Taste of Technology. This has allowed them to keep building a more profitable business with diminished concerns imposed by lockdowns, etc. Â
SASSI started over 30 years ago and is headquartered near Dulles Airport. They experienced rapid growth over their first decade and noticed increasing chaos in their operations. Careful analysis revealed they were using sometimes a half-dozen software programs for every project. This necessitated having to reinput each customer’s information multiple times throughout the process — causing costly mistakes. Â
With the founder’s brother in the software business, they built a cloud-based project management platform, MaxaWare, which handles all stages of a project, including customer, financial and purchasing information. When the system became functional for them 20 years ago, their projects ran more smoothly, the speed and reliability of execution improved, and average margins increased more than 20% in the first several months. Â
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Operating with this new platform, SASSI was able to scale the level of business more quickly, to the point of wanting to increase their reach and visibility in the market, even beyond the outward-facing builder portal built into MaxaWare. SASSI began integrating their connections and bringing enhanced digital marketing with partners such as AiN Partner and Rize Marketing for digital graphics, promos and website management.
Digital Transformations on This Scale Require a Plan
Websites and digital marketing have progressed to the point allowing the potential client to connect digitally and begin building their own knowledge and interests as they are in contact with your company. Â
Just as the level of complication of providing customer projects has increased, so too are the number of ways to measure and improve the performance analytics of your digital marketing platforms. Having professional partners that do this as their main business is key, since methodologies continually change. For example, Google is now eliminating the use of third-party cookies for all Chrome users, so new strategies for information retrieval are suddenly in order.
Therefore, having a coordinated strategy using internal project management systems for more profitable digital workflow to reach target market clients is increasingly critical to grow, build and scale up your business.
Consider the need to merge new information with archived projects and data that compels us to have a synergy of vendors, partners, and internal systems. Having software and websites that prompt the next step with people to update website and related plugin updates is becoming standard operating procedure to stay ahead of your competitors — while increasing sales and your bottom-line profit.Â
ANDREW ARD is the Chief Marketing Officer at Maxaware.  Â
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