The Business Exchange Swindon & Wiltshire Edition 38: Aug/Sept 2018 | Page 29

TECHNOLOGY REVVED UP ADPILOT NAVIGATES FIRST YEAR IN BUSINESS Bradford-on-Avon based business AdPilot is a specialist pay-per-click management company that helps small-to-medium sized businesses grow their online revenue. The company uses their knowledge, experience and creativity to deliver real and measurable results within a number of different sectors and is always keeping on top of new trends and technologies. The company was set up in 2017 and has celebrated a successful first year. Search Strategy Director, Thomas Stocks, looks back on the past year and tells us more about AdPilot’s offering. Why was AdPilot set up? We had a number of clients reach out to us, who were managing their paid marketing in-house, and it soon became clear that a number of small businesses were running campaigns which could be greatly improved and so we wanted to help those companies that don’t have the time or knowledge to continue doing it themselves. Why did you want to get involved with AdPilot? Paid search is a marketing channel that is consistently growing and there are lots of local businesses that struggle to create profitable campaigns and therefore I wanted to be able to help them with their growth, using knowledge that I’d built up over the past 7+ years. How has the first year gone? Really well. We’ve grown quicker than anticipated, have had great feedback from a number of clients and have had to take on more staff. Working with clients across a broad range of industries makes coming to work enjoyable and means each day is different. We are looking forward to growing our portfolio in the future and helping more clients reach their short and long term goals. How do you think paid search will evolve over the next few years? Personally, I think that longer search phrases will become even more common and just using single and double keyword phrases will become redundant mainly due to voice search, new devices and technology. I think we’ll also see a growth of serving ads to people’s devices whilst they’re browsing around shops and supermarket s. What is the one piece of advice would you give to businesses looking to improve their PPC campaigns? For business owners using paid search specifically, it’s important to know what your cost per acquisition would ideally be, because then you know how scalable paid search can be for your business. Also, don’t be afraid to test and fail. “We are looking forward to growing our portfolio in the future and helping more clients reach their short and long term goals.” For more info: www.adpilot.co.uk/takeoff Office challenges: using 365 to drive productivity Productivity. It’s being touted as the be-all and end-all in business today. It’s being shouted about to the point where business leaders are just switching off altogether. While outstanding productivity can only be seen as a positive thing, this fatigue around the messaging means that businesses are missing out – not just necessarily on huge productivity projects championed by governmental bodies, but on tools specifically designed for SMEs – Office 365, for example. The Bank of England, in its staff blog, noted the correlation between ever-tightening labour markets and the productivity slowdown that’s come along in tandem. “When expanding output, companies typically assess the relative costs and returns from recruiting additional labour and/or investing in new plant and machinery. Larger companies formally estimate the payback period for a major capital project, in terms of how long it takes to recover the costs of the project from enhanced earnings.” While positioned as a conundrum only facing larger businesses, assessing a total cost of ownership model against future productivity gains is something any business will do – just in different forms. Any director- level operator will look at the cost required to bring one member of staff on board, versus the technology cost that will be required to effectively automate that role away from the hands of existing staff. The Workforces 2025 Report, released in September 2017, noted that “the majority of British workers are frustrated to find themselves in office environments where they lack access to the right level of technology to do their jobs well.” Fewer than one in five British employees use instant messaging services at work, with the report highlighting a staggering lack of adoption for pre-existing productivity solutions in their place of employment. 64% of employees believe that poor technology negatively impacts their workplace productivity. It’s no surprise, then, that Shadow IT is on the rise. This is defined as systems that are built and used within businesses without explicit approval – or in some cases even without basic knowledge. This could take the form of a WhatsApp group for instant communication, unauthorised editing software installed onto computers, Dropbox, unauthorised hard drives… the list is huge. The issue for IT is that while workers need these systems to boost their own productivity, inappropriately used, Shadow IT can be a remarkably simplistic backdoor for hackers. Employees simply do not realise they have put their business at risk. Today, more than one third of employees feel their companies do not invest enough in workplace tools, according to The Modern Workplace research. According to the report, technology adoption has reached the point where IT departments “no longer have a say in which technologies will be used in the workplace, and which not.” Millennials are now doing this job for them. To borrow a turn of phrase, it’s time for businesses to take back control of their own technology adoption. 365, for small businesses, is without a doubt one of the most cost-effective productivity solutions that money can buy for SMEs. With millennial talent requiring communications, productivity and organisational tools to better complete their roles, 365 is, essentially, all this rolled into one. Better yet, it can often be integrated in an afternoon with loss-of-output limited to the lunchbreak of an employee. Any tech specialist can throw out acronyms like SaaS (Software-as-a- Service) and cloud-based architecture. What businesses need to know is this: organisations can use exactly the same software they always do - just with the addition of online file storage, hugely improved accessibility of those files, and various other applications. From real-time co-authoring of documents, to inbuilt chat functions and the ability to work from anywhere in the world, Office 365 is a simple solution for businesses to adopt, but one we often see absent from the small-business repertoire. Productivity is indeed one of the buzzwords of the day, but if businesses do not make decisions on how it can be achieved, the decision will be made by the staff. Microsoft’s 365 means that, in short, employees can be allowed to focus on their actual roles instead of time-consuming administrative tasks. For employers, this means greater output, fewer roadblocks, and happier staff. Nathan Baranowski Managing Director, ojo solutions Ojosolutions.com @ojosolutions AdPilot’s Tom Vaughton and Thomas Stocks THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2018 29