Whether you’re innovating from Day 1 or Day 1001 it’s never too early or too late to make small innovative decisions.
What is a Small Innovation?
A small innovation can be anything from choosing to use recycled paper in an energy efficient printer to choosing a smarter cloud based phone system.
Innovation comes in many forms and when you start to innovate it has a snowball effect. It touches and influences every decision you make. A year down the line you may stop and look around your business and find that many things have changed as result of you starting to make small innovations.
The Knock-on Effect of Small Innovations
Customers want to deal with organisations where innovation is the norm, where good ideas are fostered and given the space to flourish. Being innovative in how you run your office, not only shows professionalism but also how comfortable you are with everyday innovations.
A great small innovation we came across in a client’s business was instead of having a receptionist there was a self-service tablet for visitors to register their arrival. While waiting we made ourselves a frothy latte and watched their corporate video. It was impressive, clever and efficient. We are implementing it in our own office now as we too, do not have a receptionist.
Sitting back and waiting for others to innovate and slowly following suit when the masses are ready to adopt is not an innovative approach. If you want your clients to not only select you because of your innovation but because it makes them be more innovative you must start treating everything you do in an innovative way.
Show Off Your Innovation
Innovation shouldn’t be hidden in a corner or be your company’s best kept secret, which is something in Magnet we’re sometimes guilty of. Recently I visited a client of ours and who was a typical example of a company embracing innovation in every aspect of the organisation. To my delight they were using our brand to showcase to prospective customers how innovative they are; a big compliment that we are very proud of.
Innovations such as linking the phone system to a CRM and billing system, wireless headsets connected via Bluetooth or offering our landline phone customers access to the landline phone through a smartphone app. All the while saving them money… that’s innovation at its best.
Our landline phone system is also innovative in that when businesses move from their garage to a shared office and then to their own office they can take that same landline phone number with them. Our customers can add and delete users in a few clicks too, so catering for seasonal peaks and troughs as well as growth is a piece of cake!
