How to Develop a Business Strategy that Integrates Innovation into Your Workplace

INTEGRATES
INNOVATION INTO YOUR
WORKPLACE
HOW TO DEVELOP
A BUSINESS STRATEGY
THAT

Contents
How to Develop a Business Strategy That
Integrates Innovation Into Your Workplace 3
Consider These 3 Things When Innovating
Your Business Model 7
Jumpstart Your Business With Innovative
Products and Services 11
Ask Yourself These 4 Questions to Improve
Your Business Process Efficiency 15
7 Innovations To Get More Bang For Your
Marketing Bucks 19
Can New Technology Give You
An Edge Over Your Competition? 23
3 Ways To Innovate Your Supply Chain 27
Empower Your People To Unlock Your
Innovation Potential 30

When you started your company and built it up from scratch, you never imagined that
you’d eventually be hitting the “panic” button. But lately, the landsliding business
environment has made it difficult not to enter survival mode.
Before you close up shop and wait out the COVID-19 pandemic or the arduous journey
toward Brexit, let’s think about 8 ways you can incorporate innovation into your business to
help you come out of lockdown stronger than ever.
In our 8-part series, we’ll look at ways you can innovate your business:
1. Innovate Your Business With Bold Strategies
2. Innovate Your Business With a New Business Model
3. Innovate Your Business With Better Products and Services
4. Innovate Your Business With Process Improvements
5. Innovate Your Business With Marketing Techniques
6. Innovate Your Business By Adopting New Technology
7. Innovate Your Business By Revamping Your Supply Chain
8. Innovate Your Business With Your People and Culture
For the first part, let’s investigate how improving your business strategy can unlock
innovation throughout your business.
How to Develop a Business
Strategy That Integrates
Innovation Into Your
Workplace
3© Copyright Innovolo Ltd 2020

A look at business strategy
What is strategy? A business strategy is the guiding principle of your company. It’s how
your company achieves its objectives. It adds up to the way you do your business.
You want innovation to be part of the way you do your work, right? So make it part of your
strategy!
Your business strategy impacts almost every action, every hiring choice and nearly every
other business decision within your organization, so be sure to take it seriously.
How to embed innovation in your business strategy
Let’s look at some tangible steps your business can take to integrate innovation into the
way your company accomplishes its goals.
Consider innovation as an input to your success.
Innovation is often viewed as the end-point, not as a means to an end.
In reality, your company’s mission and objectives are the real things you should
strive for. Innovation should be a way to get there - as an input to your success.
Track your innovation.
In order to determine if your business is being innovative, you have to track it.
Innovation experts agree that innovation should be a metric in your company’s
valuation of success, whether through a scorecard, your Objectives and Key
Results (OKRs), or some other means.
By securing innovation as a measurement, you can connect innovation to your
short and long-term results.
Design a good template for employees to keep track of their innovations. Make it
accessible to everyone, through cloud storage or a networked drive, to make sure
it’s embedded at all levels and utilized by all employees.

Define innovation in order to track it.
So many businesses fail at tracking innovation because they simply can’t define
it. In most cases, companies track “growth”, which will often be directly impacted
by innovation.
Instead, separate the term “innovation” from the larger buckets of “growth” or
other financial metrics you use to track progress.
You might be surprised to find that innovation can come from many departments.
If the marketing department did a rebrand of your business to be more appealing
to new demographics, you should track it! If your back-end developers
streamlined software code to increase the loading speeds of your mobile apps,
track it!
It’s easy for innovation outcomes to get lost in the hustle and bustle of everyday
business. But by having clear definitions for innovation, you can celebrate your
successes and integrate innovation into your workplace much more easily.
Integrate your work teams together.
Miscommunication can destroy projects in your organization.
To improve communication among work units and among employees or partners,
try to integrate projects as an organic process. Try doing your brainstorming
exercises together and combine the expertise of many different employees and
subject matter experts. It’s a much better way to do business rather than working
separately and trying to combine everyone’s suggestions after the fact.
If there is a company-wide innovation committee, make sure that there is a
representative from every business area at the table.
Build a culture of innovation.
Struggling to get innovative ideas off the ground? Are projects getting stuck at the
approval stage? Chances are, your innovation plans are either disorganized or
not getting “sold” to senior management.
Try incorporating fun (and more efficient) ways of being innovative. Try doing
innovation pitches in the style of the TV programme Dragon’s Den. It can be fun
and rewarding to have employees plan and build pitches to senior management
about innovative new projects and ideas.
Doing so can enhance traction and buy-in because teams demonstrate their
passion and commitment, which can be persuasive and infectious. Read more
about this idea here.

Get senior leader endorsement.
Get a senior leader to be a sponsor of innovation. Doing so shows accountability
and commitment for innovation. Their professional performance can be based on
how well they promote innovation at work.
Set up a separate fund for innovation projects.
By keeping dedicated resources for innovation, there will be less competition
and you won’t have to make the difficult decisions to pull funds away from other
departments if you want to implement an innovative new idea.
Monitor trends in your business sector.
By keeping an eye out on what your competitors are doing, you can get inspired
to improve and redesign new products and services or expand into new markets.
Doing so helps keep your business innovative and competitive.
The benefits of combining innovation with business strategy
By incorporating innovation into the way your business accomplishes its goals, you’ll reap
many benefits:
Better senior leader buy-in. If it’s in a strategy, senior leaders are more likely to
agree to innovation projects because they directly connect to your business plan.
Increased innovation funding opportunities from within the company;
Improved inspiration and innovative thinking by employees and teams; and,
Increased productivity, smarter utilization of technology and more value added to
your customers and clients.
Think you have what it takes to successfully integrate innovation into your business
strategy? Great! - but why stop there? In the next post, we’ll see if you’re up to the challenge
of innovating your business model.

There are lots of ways you can go about improving your business. You can incorporate
new technology, launch a new product or expand your revenue streams. If you want a
good place to start, check out our first post in this series about 8 ways to innovate your
business.
Here, we’ll focus on transforming your business model with innovation. There are three
things to keep in mind when exploring new business models:
1. Design your business model around bringing value to your customers;
2. Develop a strong business infrastructure; and,
3. Use information to your advantage to predict changes.
These three things can unlock new dimensions to your business and can help you attain
revenues and profits that aren’t possible if you stay static with your business model. Let’s
take a closer look.
What is business model innovation?
Your business model is all about how you make money while delivering value to your
customers.
Innovating your business model involves changing two things at the same time:
A. The value you bring to customers; and,
B. Your operating model.
By changing what you provide and how you provide it, you can innovate your business
model.
Consider These 3 Things
When Innovating Your
Business Model

Why business model innovation is important
Business models don’t last as long as they used to. It used to be that companies stayed
operational and valuable for decades while using the same business model.
Nowadays, competitors sprout up at a rapid pace, technology disrupts consistency and
consumer tastes constantly evolve. Putting those factors together means your business
model is at risk of becoming outdated.
The rapid changes and risks can be scary for business owners like yourself. It might be
tempting to constantly tweak your business model to keep up. If technology and consumer
trends are constantly changing, then you might think your model needs constant love and
attention.
Well, yes and no. Business model innovation is great. But sometimes it’s okay to leave
your business model alone and prevent yourself from acting too radically and putting
your company into a corner. Let’s look at how you can build up your resiliency and create
adaptable business models.
Tip #1: Design your business model around your strengths
How does your business create value? Once you find it, your business model should
be designed around bringing that value to the world in new ways. The value proposition
is the thing that you bring to your customers’ lives - it’s the solution to their problems.
Your value proposition is unique to your business. If personable customer service and
sales representation are the things that set you apart from your competitors, then make
sure your business model leverages that advantage. Make sure that your customers
are able to engage with the personable and professional representatives somewhere
along the service chain of your company.
The ingredient to your success is unique to your company. Think about ways you can
proudly display your secret sauce through your business model.
Tip #2: Deepen your business infrastructure
For your business model to withstand the constant pressure and the changing economic
conditions, you need a solid business infrastructure.
Your business infrastructure is the foundation that ensures your operations run smoothly.
It’s the coordination of all your inputs - your human resources, technology and customer
relations department that work together to achieve your goals.
If you strengthen your infrastructure - the ability to handle change in your organization
- then your business and the services it provides can withstand shocks and changes to
the market.

To do so, make sure your company can answer the following questions:
What do we need to accomplish our goals?
What needs to be done today?
Who needs to do it?
If everyone in your company is able to consistently answer these types of questions,
chances are good that your business infrastructure is in okay shape.
Tip #3: Be analytical and predict changes
If your business model needs to adapt to changing business conditions, how do you
know when (and how) to change it? The answer is all about using information to your
advantage.
Some companies invest millions of dollars in business analytics every year and it’s a
growing field of study. However, you don’t need to be on the cutting edge of sophistication
with your own analytics. You can observe what’s happening at the company level to
determine your business needs.
Try to define and measure your own successes in order to understand how your company
is doing. Listen to your staff and watch your competitors to gain valuable insights into
your marketplace and industry. If they start to use digital platforms to engage their
customers, you can try to match their business model and ideally one-up them with your
own unique spin.
Gathering even simple data can help you predict the direction of your industry and offer
you opportunities to change the course of your business model.

Business model innovation in practice
Looking for an example of business model innovation for inspiration?
One of the best examples is also a timely one. In 2020, millions of businesses around the
world are forced to adapt their business models to the economic and social impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic.
With many countries around the world practicing social distancing and staying indoors,
many businesses - like those in restaurants or retail - are disrupted.
With consumers not coming to the physical locations of restaurants, businesses have to
respond by shaking up their business models:
1. First, the businesses are finding new ways of bringing value to customers.
z With storefronts closing to the public, many restaurants have revamped
their offerings to allow for more food delivery and even curbside pickup.
2. The businesses are relying on their foundations to make sure they are able to re-
allocate their resources efficiently.
z Less service staff to help customers in-store means they need to increase
their delivery staff and shake up their marketing strategies. Each change
shows off how their strong and adaptable business infrastructure helps
them to weather the storm.
3. The businesses have predicted the required changes.
z The businesses have read the news and crunched to numbers. If people
aren’t going to be coming to their restaurants any time soon, they know
they need to take action, fast. By using their predictive abilities, they
identified the need to innovate their business models.
For now, social isolation and business model adaptations are a new normal for many
businesses in countries that feel the deep impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only time
will tell how long it will last - so businesses need to keep focusing on predicting what
will happen, relying on their value proposition and staying the course with adaptable and
innovative business models.
Ready for more ways to improve your business and unlock your innovation potential? The
next post in our special series - 8 Ways to Innovate Your Business - is all about improving
your products and services. Check it out here.

Jumpstart Your Business
With Innovative Products
and Services
What do a restaurateur and a financial wellness consultant
have in common?
It may sound like the introduction to a bad joke but it’s actually a fitting comparison for
2020’s economic and business environment.
Both are entrepreneurs feeling the business impacts of COVID-19.
Robert the restaurateur feels the social separation measures which keep
customers away from his restaurant.
Aamirah the financial advisor finds it hard to come by new wealth management
clients amidst crashing global markets and business slowdowns.
While things may look grim for both entrepreneurs, what they don’t know is that there is a
way to jumpstart their businesses even during economic lockdown.
In this post, the third part of our series - 8 Ways to Innovate Your Business, we’re taking
a look at how to revamp products and services. Let’s see what Robert and Aamirah can do
to stay innovative.

What are your products or services?
As a consumer, you consume products and services almost daily. Everything right down to
the groceries you bought on Sunday are products that you buy for consumption.
As a business, products and services are what you trade with customers and clients to add
value to their lives, often in exchange for their cash. Your products and services solve the
problems that customers face.
For simplification, we’ll generalize the terms products and services to a single term -
offerings. Your unique offering is the ingredient to your success that differentiates your
business from your competitors. It’s the secret sauce of how you can solve customer
problems better, easier or faster than others. For innovating your products and services,
it’s best to focus on the unique value that only you can provide.
Innovating your offerings isn’t something that has to be daunting or take many years to
plan, develop and implement. Let’s take a look at two simple ways to innovate your unique
offerings.
1. Expand your catalogue to offer both products and services
Aamira, the financial consultant, prides herself on the way she works with clients to
offer them the best possible financial advice. She works on a case-by-case basis to
assess the exact requirements her clients need and them the best possible wealth
management portfolio.
What she provides is a service - her advice and expertise is non-physical yet brings her
clients incredible value.
Especially during tough times when business is slow, she could innovate her offerings
by adding to her inventory. She already offers a great service, but what if she added a
product, too?
She could develop informational products such as brochures or e-books on financial
health. She’s an expert in her field so developing digital files of her expertise could be
a great way to attract new revenue streams. She can advertise and sell the information
products to her clients and through her website.
By diversifying her catalogue and adding revenue streams, she can keep her consulting
business financially viable during tough times.
2. Improve the tangible and intangible aspects of your offerings
Robert, the restaurant owner, offers tangible products - food - to his customers every
time they come sit at his tables. His cookbook is diverse and his head chef makes
amazing dishes that delight families and food critics alike.
Only, something isn’t quite right - his reviews online point out that while the food is great,
the setting and atmosphere need some work. His dimly lit hole-in-the wall restaurant
doesn’t attract anything more than local customers and his reviews are taking a hit.

Robert should invest some effort into improving the overall experience of his customers.
His unique offering should involve two things - the food plates (the tangible aspect) and
the mood and setting of the dining experience (the intangible aspect).
With the COVID-19 pandemic shutting dining rooms and shops all over the
neighbourhood, Robert decides that now is a good time to invest in his location. He
hires an interior designer to help improve the setting and enlists the help of an audio-
visual expert to amp up the music and lighting of his location.
Once he’s able to open his doors to the public, his customers will enjoy a bold new
experience and hopefully he can attract new customers from all over town and maybe
even all over the country.
Guidelines for better product and service innovation
You may have noticed some commonalities to the above examples. If so, that’s great! The
truth is, there are many tried and true ways you can innovate your value offerings.
Here are some guidelines that can apply to many industries. Try putting some of these
tips as post-it notes in your office to help keep your mind thinking about innovation and
improvements during your day-to-day:
1. If you don’t know what can be improved, ask. Ask your customers, colleagues
and clients about new products or services that can add value to their lives. Or,
ask them how your current offerings can be improved to add even more value.
Both will offer valuable insight as to how you can innovate your products and
services.
2. Eliminate what doesn’t work. Sometimes, innovating your offerings doesn’t
involve adding something to the mix. Sometimes you have to make the hard
decision of cutting something from your catalogue. Be smart about it - use the
information you’ve gleaned from customer feedback to inform your business
decisions.
3. Combine fields of study. Sometimes you don’t have the right skills or expertise
to do every aspect of your product innovation. In Robert’s case, he may know lots
about food, but he needed help from designers and experts to get the full eating
experience right at his restaurant.
4. Keep your eye on the competition. Sometimes, the best new product ideas can
come from watching what others do. You can stay one step ahead and add even
more value to your clients by improving on your competitors’ services or products.
5. Use new technologies and platforms. In today’s age, sometimes your
competitive advantage is ready-made and available to you through digitized
technology. For example, in addition to fixing his restaurant’s atmosphere, Robert
can also expand into food delivery. To do so he can leverage digital platforms like
Just Eat or Deliveroo which can provide him a steady stream of hungry customers
looking for their next meal.

6. Design a new offering from the ground-up. Sometimes, offering something
completely new is the best way to diversify your product catalog. Do you have
an inspiration for a new product idea? Designing a business offering from the
ground-up is where experts at Innovolo can add immense value to your business.
Try having a quick and 100% confidential conversation about your product idea
with Innovolo.
In the next article in our series on 8 Ways to Innovate Your Business, we’ll look at methods
to improve the business process at your company. Improving how you do things can be
every bit as important as improving what you do. Check it out here.

Running your business is complex. As it grows you have to add more employees,
departments and partners to the mix. When you get to the office and see six new
voicemails and a full inbox, your business starts to feel chaotic.
Luckily for you, there are ways to stay on top of the chaos. In this article of our series on 8
Ways to Innovate Your Business, we’re looking at ways to improve business processes.
When growing your business, you have to look at how you do things as well as what you do
in order to clarify the noise, use resources more effectively and get the best return for your
investments. By identifying what needs to be improved and what needs to be scrapped
completely, you clear the way for more innovation in your business.
Defining Business Process Optimization
Process optimization is about boosting efficiency by making tasks simpler, reducing
redundant tasks and trimming wasteful activities. It streamlines your work, improves
communication and frees up capacity for forecasting and innovation.
Ask yourself the following four questions to see if you can do more with your business
resources.
Ask Yourself These 4
Questions to Improve Your
Business Process Efficiency

#1 Do you understand your value chain?
Your value chain is the entirety of your business process, starting when your product gets
created and ending when it’s enjoyed by your customer.
It’s called a value chain because each step should add value to the final product or service.
By taking a deep dive on your value chain, you can determine if some steps add more
value than others.
In your investigation, watch out for bottlenecks. A bottleneck blocks the productivity of
your value chain and commonly occurs when employees or equipment can’t keep up with
production at a specific step.
A common bottleneck for businesses is the handoff process.
If your company relies on managing expense payments to keep production
flowing and clients happy, then make sure there are no bottlenecks in the
approval process.
If your policies require final sign-offs from senior leaders - who are often tied up in
meetings or travel. If you miss handoffs you can miss orders and create unhappy
clients.
Try assigning a designate with the ability to approve payments when the other
authority is busy. That should get payments flowing and business activities back
to their full potential.
Remember: do a mapping exercise of your value chain and identify opportunities to
cut slack while adding value to your final product or service.

#2 Can you automate your repetitive tasks?
Some tasks are required to keep your business going but can be streamlined with automation
techniques. The common culprits are activities like filing, paperwork, packaging and data
entry.
Let’s look at data entry as a common example:
Does your office administration do lots of data entry? That activity might pull them
away from accomplishing other meaningful tasks like booking new clients or
referring customers to other employees.
Try doing the data entry in batches. Batching is a great automation technique
that sets aside designated time to do repetitive tasks all in one go. It’s better
than letting your employees get distracted throughout the work week. Every
time they have to drop what they’re doing and switch tasks, it creates a process
inefficiency.
Try going one step further with full automation. You can utilize digitization
software that turns handwritten letters and numbers into digital files that can
be further processed on your computer systems. Once digitized, all that’s
required is a quick validation process, meaning you can reduce the hours your
administrators spend punching numbers onto their keypads.
Remember: repetitive tasks exist throughout your business. Try to automate them
with digital solutions or with common techniques like batching.
#3 Are your employees empowered?
One of the most challenging and delicate areas to innovate workflow efficiencies are with
your employees.
Employees are often the front lines of your business. They know the process like the backs
of their hands. That’s why it’s important to get their feedback about ways to innovate your
business process and empower them to enact change.
Watch and track how your employees perform their tasks, which will help you
spot the fastest ways to do something. Then, build that process into your policies
and training so that other employees follow suit. Empower the best employees to
mentor others.
Optimize your delegation techniques. Monitor when managers get involved in
routine business operations that can be carried out by other staff members.
Empower your employees and delegate new responsibilities to them. Doing so
can improve trust and morale, reduce the duplication of tasks and flatten out
bottlenecks in your business process.
Remember: Use the powerful insights of your employees to your advantage when
you optimize business processes.

#4 Have you used technology to its fullest potential?
There are lots of great software applications to help with optimizing your business processes.
The benefits are numerous:
Software can help with automation by sending alerts to certain employees that
are required at various stages of the value chain.
It can help improve communication and collaboration by giving a consistent
platform for all departments to stay in touch with each other. Improved
communication helps reduce delays and minimize errors from misinterpretation.
A software suite is like automating your own analysis of your value chain. Let the
software take on the challenging parts of analysis like gathering data and looking
for bottlenecks.
Remember: innovating your business process with software can greatly increase
productivity. Make sure that every team member is willing and able to use the
software since their data input is essential to the project.
Better process means more time for innovation
There’s no better time than the present to go down the route of process improvement.
Doing a proper analysis can be a great opportunity to improve your internal abilities and
the value that you bring to customers.
Make sure that you are transparent about your improvement activities. Employees in your
company don’t like to feel like their activities are wasteful or redundant. Be sure to frame
the issue from a problem-solving perspective.
By removing the activities that don’t add value you can free up employee hours and give
them opportunities to take on bold new innovation exercises.
Ready for more in our series of 8 Ways to Innovate Your Business? Read the next guide
on how you can innovate your marketing efforts.

7 Innovations To Get More
Bang For Your Marketing
Bucks
If you’re a small business, your marketing budget may be a sliver compared to your other
departments. It can be hard enough to keep a business open during tough economic
times, let alone feel comfortable pouring cash into marketing campaigns.
In this post, part of our series on 8 Ways To Innovate Your Business, we’re talking about
how innovation in the marketing department can help create a buzz for your products or
services.
Can you develop great marketing campaigns while on a shoestring budget? The answer is
yes - and it all comes down to innovative marketing strategies.
What is innovative marketing?
Marketing is all about communicating your products and services to your customers. After
all, if they don’t know about what you can do, how will they get interested in your services?
Innovative marketing is a way to generate new ideas plus boost the appeal of your product
or service. Being innovative with marketing helps your business to:
Keep up with the rapidly changing business world;
Use new technologies to your advantage;
Explore new markets; and,
Increase sales and profitability.

7 simple techniques to innovate your marketing
Part of being innovative with your marketing is to maximize your dollars. It may be a tough
sell to your partners or your investors to invest very much cash into advertising, but it’s not
a part of your business you want to overlook, either.
Try applying some of these techniques to get the most from your marketing dollars:
1. Do market research
How will you know what your potential customers prefer if you don’t see things from
their perspective? Doing so will teach you what your customers want plus help you
understand new behaviours and trends.
Since we’re all about maximising marketing dollars - you don’t have to invest heavily on
focus groups or customer surveys, either. These can be costly and there are cheaper
alternatives. One such way is to simply observe your customers’ behaviour. Your own
customers can provide you a wealth of information - you only have to be on the lookout.
You can also get in touch with other companies in your industry and solicit services like
a customer would to get a better perspective on the customer journey.
Lastly, you can use research done by others. Some businesses may post corporate
reports to their websites that offer valuable insight into your customers. You can also
try the academic route or find reports published by national institutes. There’s lots of
information available on the web - you just have to do some research specific to your
industry.
2. Price your products uniquely and smartly
Product pricing is one of the fundamental parts of marketing strategies. It’s also
something that many companies get wrong. Often, prices are set according to internal
value or are tied to the margins involved in production.
However, your pricing strategy is actually one of the most important ways you can
market your products or services because prices impact customer decisions in a big
way.
For example, the first thing you probably check out while shopping for clothes is the
price tag. Your customers are the same. Based on a single figure, they may decide to
walk away. That’s why it’s important to both set appropriate prices and create a great
shopping experience for your customers before hitting them with the price.
There are also innovative pricing options to try out. You can differentiate your products
or services with basic and premium offerings. This strategy works great because it can
set expectations. Giving pricing options for your services also lets you capture different
customer segments - those who may be attracted (or repulsed) by different price tiers.

3. Use unconventional product promotion
There are plenty of budget-friendly marketing strategies. Some are unconventional and
may surprise your customers in a good way. For inspiration, check out some examples
of exciting product promotions here. These include ads both physical and online that
balance the line between being engaging, shocking and attractive.
Sometimes unconventional promotion is considered guerilla marketing. It can involve
taking out innovative ads to post in your neighbourhood or even handing out simple
flyers to help draw attention to your services. Here, the key is to balance being innovative
without relying on gimmicks, which may detract from the effectiveness of your marketing
attempts. Also, be sure to follow proper business etiquette and local bylaws.
4. Spread the word with word of mouth
Try encouraging your customers to promote your products for you. But remember - only
happy and satisfied customers will promote your products. That’s why it’s important to
put the customer first and exceed their expectations. Doing so will build loyal customers
who are happy to recommend your services to others.
To encourage customer referrals, try mapping out your customer’s journey. You’ll notice
there are many instances where your business interacts with them. There may be a
cold call, a sales call, a website visit, a QA document, the shopping cart experience
and the product delivery experience.
At all those stages, think carefully about how you can promote word of mouth behaviour
and referrals from your customers. A simple tactic is to package referral coupons upon
final delivery of your product or service.
5. Social media marketing
Social media marketing isn’t particularly new anymore. But it’s still growing and not too
late to get on board. Social media is a hugely engaging platform. If you want to get the
most bang for your buck, you should utilize technology to your full advantage in your
marketing strategies.
Social media platforms provide you the ultimate access to customers and their friend
networks. You can target specific markets and demographics through social media
advertising, as well as build powerful brand loyalty and trust with your customers.
6. Expand to new markets
Sometimes, the market in which you operate is saturated and highly competitive.
However, by looking outside of your marketing bubble, new markets can offer low
competition and can yield great new paying customers. This is the time to leverage
social media and other technology platforms to access new markets. Social media can
be the perfect companion to help you break into new markets and clients that you may
not know exist. The best part is that it can be done cheaply and on budget.

7. Focus on your brand.
Remember from an earlier post in this series when we talked about your unique value
offering? If you haven’t read it, check it out here.
Your unique approach to offering value to your clients is part of building your brand. In
marketing, your brand impacts how you build trust and is normally one of the first things
that gives your customers an impression of your business. You better be sure it’s a
positive one!
To maximise your marketing dollar, always keep your brand in constant focus. It’s what
tells your customers who you are in a consistent way and shows to your customers
that your business has a personality and can be trusted. Whether in your brochures,
social media, e-mail or ad campaigns, your brand is a powerful part of your marketing
success.
Don’t let your marketing strategy collect dust
Keep these tips in mind whenever you need to boost your marketing impact even on a
shoestring budget.
Once you’ve put some thought into integrating these marketing tips, check out the next post
in our series on 8 Ways to Innovate Your Business, which is all about how to discover
and maximise the impact of new technologies.

Can New Technology Give
You An Edge Over Your
Competition?
Jane owns a transportation company
and was profiled in a different post
on the Innovolo blog. She’s an example
of a business owner who, despite a
horrific economic climate and impacts
of the COVID-19 pandemic, is deciding
to move ahead with incorporating new
technologies into her business.
Why is she doing this? Despite social
isolation measures to stop the spread
of COVID-19 and the widespread closure
of non-essential businesses across many
countries, now is actually a good time to take
an inward look and innovate your business.
Technology has a huge impact on your
business process and for many businesses
it’s an important part of their growth strategy.
In this post in our series on 8 Ways to Innovate
Your Business, we’ll take a deep dive on how
incorporating new technologies can give you an edge over your competition.
A history of technology in business
Technology has been used to amplify businesses throughout history. Just look at the
technological impact that the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century had on modern
industry. Steam power and the increased use of rail technology not only sped up production
but it radically transformed the way businesses operate and the way consumers access
products.
Today, new technology is still the foundation of business startups. Particularly in the
tech industry in the last forty years, advancements like the internet and software have
revolutionized manufacturing and knowledge industries alike. You may remember how
Dave the school teacher, an example you can find here on the Innovolo blog, turned a
great new software idea into a business venture.

Examples of technologies that give your business an edge
No matter your business, you probably use technology for assistance every single day.
Let’s look at some of the most common ways that new software can boost your business
advantage.
Web platforms and content creation
Many businesses use blogs, social media or other web platforms to show their expertise.
Blogging, while not new, is a content marketing strategy that informs audiences and
builds their trust in innovative and engaging ways. Content marketing as a whole took
a huge step forward by incorporating blogs and web platforms in the last twenty years.
Using online content to grow your business is easier than ever with the rise in popularity
of do-it-yourself website design platforms like Wordpress and Blogger.
Web platform technology is great for: consultant or e-commerce businesses that
need to build trust and demonstrate expertise in order to attract new customers
and convert readers into customers. Or, small businesses in any field that want to
appear at the top of search engine rankings for their geographic locales.
Database management software
Any business that uses data can benefit from database management software. Even
if you don’t think data software has a purpose in your organization - think again. Even
though you don’t currently capture much data, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t.
Database software works as a virtual file cabinet and is an obvious choice for tech
companies to innovate and streamline their processes. Even other industries like law,
the public sector and even the skilled trades can benefit from consistent and secure
data management.
Database technology can help companies boost productivity by reducing the amount of
paperwork and automating the data entry and storage processes.
Good data also allows you to better engage with your customers. By being able to
retrieve data efficiently, you’ll be able to build custom reports and show expertise.
Sometimes it’s not about the quantity of data but more about the quality.
Database software is great for: businesses in data-heavy industries like tech,
health, public services or manufacturing. Or, any business that can benefit from
good data best practices.

Human resource software
Unless you’re a one-person team or the self-titled CEO and supreme leader of your
own company of one (sounds a bit lonely, doesn’t it?), you probably employ some staff.
That means that you need to manage your human resources.
It can be a huge administrative task to manually and personally administer HR processes.
That’s where HR software solutions come in. They can streamline and automate the
back end of your business including benefits, payroll, recruiting and lots more.
Just like how earlier in this series we talked about how process automation is key to
innovating your business [link to 4. Process], HR software can help save labour time by
simplifying administrative tasks that would otherwise eat into your business productivity.
HR software is great for: any business that directly employs staff. The more staff,
the bigger the impact from HR process automation.
Communication technology
Whether you have a couple employees or are a large company with lots of
staff, communication between employees and teams is vital for your business.
Miscommunication can lead to business errors and even unhappy customers.
A great way to improve communication is to incorporate new channels into your
business practices. Technology can help with that - try some of the fastest-growing
communication platforms for business, such as Slack.
Slack is just one example of many communication platforms out there. Each one can
improve how your company practices open communication. The results can be fantastic,
as teams and departments create information-sharing channels and share up-to-date
data across the company through a consistent platform.
No more trying to remember whether that report you saw came from an email, an inter-
office snail mail or a text message from your colleague. Just open your communication
software to find exactly what you’re looking for.
Communication platforms are great for: businesses that employ multiple teams,
those that are spread out geographically or those that employ work-from-home
consultants.

3 ways to implement new software and technology
1. You can get in touch with a software development company to custom-build a
solution. One drawback with this method is the time and cost to research and
work with a company. After deployment, you may need to pay for your own in-
house tech support to update and troubleshoot your new custom tech solution.
2. You can use existing platforms to innovate your technology. One advantage with
the software as a service (SaaS) technology model is that customer support and
troubleshooting is often handled by the company that you license.
3. You can partner with Innovolo, who can help outsource your innovation ideas
in technology and software to reliable service providers. You’ll work together to
figure out the best way to get the most from software and technology platforms for
your business.
If you’ve mastered technology at your workplace, be sure to read more in our series on
8 Ways to Innovate Your Business, with the next section about improving your supply
chain.

In the next post in our series - 8 Ways to Innovate Your
Business - let’s look at how to innovate your supply
chain and your outsourcing techniques.
This post is geared toward those that rely
on other companies and manufacturers to
provide end-products to their customers.
It includes industrial and manufacturing
companies but also knowledge sectors
such as the public service which relies
on relationships with other enterprises
and contractors.
Even if you’re a small business that
operates out of your garage, you may not realize the impact that an innovative supply chain
can have. Even the pens that feature your business logo that you ordered online can be
considered part of your supply chain network.
What is a supply chain?
You can think of your supply chain as the network, apart from your own business, that helps
get your products to your customer. Consider that there are many links in the supply chain:
Creation or extraction of raw materials;
Production or conversion of raw goods to intermediate or consumable goods;
Storing products in warehouses;
Delivering products through logistic companies to retailers or directly to
consumers; and,
Selling final goods to consumers.
Those are just some of the common links in the supply chain - there may be others
depending on the complexity of your product.
Often, every link in the supply chain is a different business or enterprise that both adds
value to the product but also adds cost to you.
3 Ways To Innovate Your
Supply Chain

Three ways to get the most innovation from your supply chain
While every link along the supply chain adds complexity to the process, it also offers great
innovation potential. At every step of your product’s journey to the consumer, you have an
opportunity to innovate.
1. Be innovative in HOW you procure
If you procure products or services “down the line” of your supply chain, be sure to do
so with an underlying framework that suits your needs.
You can develop a procurement strategy which will shape your priorities and make them
known to your supply chain. If you value environmental impact and innovation, then you
can build those components into your procurement strategy. Then, your contracting
decisions will be guided toward companies that are committed to the components that
you value most.
Or, build competitive processes into how you procure services in your supply chain.
Make sure to get quotes and negotiate a good deal. Sometimes, being innovative is
simply about being self interested and ensuring you get the best possible deal.
Last, be strategic in how you market and sell your requirements to suppliers. In this
case, innovation is all about making sure the supplier wants to work with you, as well
as vice-versa. Don’t think that just because you have a service proposal, every supplier
will be begging for your business. You have to be innovative and continue to research
and understand the marketplace in order to get the most from your negotiations and
outsourcing.
2. Be innovative in WHAT you procure
You have to get creative when looking at all the available options in the supply chain.
Often, it simply involves doing research and sourcing the most innovative products you
can find that suit your business needs.
For example, if you have an e-commerce company, sometimes it’s not the most obvious
and most popular manufacturer of your product that will lead to the best deal. Be
creative and look at other sourcing options that may offer better products that are much
more easily marketed or may better suit the needs of your customers. As a result, your
products and services may stand out compared to your competitors and you can boost
profitability.
To know what type of innovative products to source, you also have to listen to your
customers to understand what you should provide them. We learned in an earlier post
that revamping your product lineup can be a valuable way to innovate your business.
The same applies to your supply chain - by responding to changing customer needs,
you’ll need to stay innovative and adaptable to provide new and improved goods.

3. PROMOTE innovation with your suppliers
This last way to innovate your supply chain is the hardest one to accomplish. However,
it may yield the best impact. We’re talking about promoting innovation from the external
companies that make up your supply chain. It sounds simple but it can be a delicate
process.
Every link in the supply chain can be improved with innovative practices, but making it
happen is a different story. You don’t have direct control over the end-to-end process of
other businesses. But that’s why you have to ask nicely.
To work with suppliers, try creating brochures or digital material that explain your
preference for innovative practices. When you begin work with a new supplier,
ask about how they stay on the cutting edge of innovation.
As part of the business requirements and the negotiation process, ask for an
innovation plan about how that enterprise can be innovative in how they supply
your goods or services.
Promote innovation by managing relationships. It’s much easier to have
challenging conversations with your suppliers after you’ve built trust and rapport
with them. Be sure to emphasise that innovation can impact the returns that your
suppliers receive because they can automate and improve their processes, too.
Making your supply chain work for you
Your supply chain isn’t always visible as you manage the operations of your business. It
may rely on enterprises that operate in different countries and communicate in different
languages.
A supply chain is complex and it’s common to neglect it as a source of innovation.
That’s why it’s important to reflect on the three methods, above, in order to maximise
the innovation potential from your supply chain. Doing so can help your business stay
ahead and outlast competitors as well as add better value to your customers.
Want to know about innovation? In the next (and final) post of our series - 8 Ways to
Innovate Your Business - we’ll look at how to promote innovation in your employees
and workplace culture.

When times are tough and sales are slow, managing your people may be one of the
most challenging parts of your business. The social and economic lockdown that
grips many parts of the world from COVID-19 has forced businesses to lay off thousands
of employees.
Even in tough times, how you manage your organisation’s people can be a great place to
let innovation spring to life. Unlocking that innovation is perhaps all the more essential for
your business to stay on its feet when cash is tight or sales are slow.
In this post - the final in our series on 8 Ways To Innovate Your Business - let’s take a look
at how your people and your workplace culture impact your organisational innovation.
Innovate corporate-sponsored development
For those of you still tricking into offices and workplaces while under economic and social
lockdown from COVID-19, it’s a great time to focus on development. Company-sponsored
development, for both you and your fellow employees, is not only important to get the most
out of your workforce, but it’s critical to attract and retain top talent.
It’s not just skills and expertise that you should focus your professional development
opportunities on. The health and wellbeing of your employees is important, too. Many
businesses look to improve work-life balance and improve employee motivation by
sponsoring gym classes and fitness programs.
On top of common career-related development opportunities like professional certifications,
software training or public speaking, you should build employee wellbeing into your people
strategy to help motivate staff and unlock their true potential.
Empower Your People To
Unlock Your Innovation
Potential

Innovate physical space
Be sure to accommodate the preferences of your workforce. It’s especially important to
offer flexibility at a time when working from home has become a mainstay in the corporate
world and is keeping businesses afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In situations where work from home is not an option, be sure to focus on improving the
physical space of your offices or facilities. For office staff, providing standing desks and
areas to socialize during breaks can be interactive and productivity-boosting alternatives
to the dreary cubicle-land that inhabit many businesses.
For manufacturing and warehouse facilities, try offering modern locker rooms and personal
storage spaces to help keep employees happy. Other on-the-job comforts like standing
pads or proper footwear for those who stand for long periods can help boost employee
happiness.
No matter how you innovate your physical spaces - be sure to ask for employee perspectives.
Without their feedback, you’ll lose employee buy-in and lose their trust.
It’s difficult to ask employees to be innovative while they’re unhappy or unmotivated at your
workplace. Asking for their feedback and improving the physical space of your facilities can
be one of the most rewarding ways to foster innovation in your employees.
Innovate by treating your employees like your customers
An excellent way to innovate your employees’ experience at work is to treat them like your
customer. It might sound bizarre, but consider it for a moment.
You strive to create the best possible experience for your customers. Since employees
are one of the most important aspects of your business, why not treat them with that same
level of respect and attention, too? The employee experience at work is not only made up
of their tasks, perks or rewards. It’s also all about the human elements - the intangibles that
ensure workers find value and meaning in the work they do.
Provide a rewarding human experience by being supportive for your employees and
empowering them to excel. By challenging your employees, you can give them the space to
be innovative. Supportive and empowering environments ensure that employees actually
want to come to work. To do so, just remember- treat them as good as (or better than!) you
would your customers.
Innovate your building blocks
While a good human experience is important for your employees to feel motivated and
happy at work, how exactly should it be accomplished?
The human element is often attributed to employee engagement. That is, helping employees
to believe in the organisation, respect other colleagues, and carry a positive attitude into
the workplace.

To drive employee engagement, your human resource innovation efforts should revolve
around putting in place these building blocks:
Quality management practices - involve employees in decision-making and
empower them;
Allow employee voices to be heard - strive for two-way communication and
cooperation; and,
Commit to employee well-being - include physical health and mental wellness
into your HR practices.
These building blocks require a huge amount of effort to put in place. Not only that, once
implemented they require continual innovations by responding to employee feedback. It
can be a monumental challenge, but your employees are the foundation of your company’s
success so you can’t slack on giving them the best possible workplace experience.
Innovate your entire human network, not just your payroll staff
It used to be that your employees were only considered to be the people on your payroll.
Now, as business models become more complex, it’s important to think about your entire
network of relationships as important inputs to your business.
Earlier in the series we talked about how you can innovate along your entire supply chain
[link to article #7]. Similarly, a good human resource strategy considers your entire network
of business contacts, vendors, financiers and partners as part of your business family.
Doing so allows you to empower and unlock innovation through every person-to-person
business interaction.
There are three ways to ensure your entire network is part of your extended business
family:
1. Innovate how you recruit employees and select partners.
z Good recruitment of your own employees is just as important as recruiting
the right links in your supply chain or your business contacts. Set standards
for yourself and make sure that new relationships align with the values that
are important to you.
2. Innovate social connectivity so that important relationships flourish
z Your network of human connection should be properly engaged with each
other. Roadblocks should be cleared and communication lines opened up
if you want to make sure your business network operates at full potential.
3. Innovate the structure and organisation to hold the entire network together
z Look for ways that your corporate structure can be improved to
accommodate team-based innovation. Outside your office, make sure that
vendors and contractors are aware of your structure, who to talk to, and
any changes to your organisation that impacts them.

Innovating Your Business
Your employees are just one aspect that enables your business to be innovative. For
more ways to innovate your business, check out our full series that features many more
components. Here’s a full list of the series to help you find what you’re looking for:
1. Innovate Your Business With Bold Strategies
2. Innovate Your Business With a New Business Model
3. Innovate Your Business With Better Products and Services
4. Innovate Your Business With Process Improvements
5. Innovate Your Business With Marketing Techniques
6. Innovate Your Business By Adopting New Technology
7. Innovate Your Business By Revamping Your Supply Chain
8. Innovate Your Business With Your People and Culture
For up-to-date information on how managing innovation benefits your company, be sure to
check out the Innovolo blog, where we post regular content about how you can unlock your
full potential with the help of innovation.

How to Develop a Business Strategy that Integrates Innovation into Your Workplace

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