Small businesses have a daunting task that they have to run a business with a small team. Technology is a beneficial tool that you can invest in, as these systems help increase brand awareness, efficiency and ultimately, increase revenue. Your audience will become more technology savvy and keeping up with their behaviors will in turn help your business. We are here to offer some reasonable and helpful systems that can increase productivity for your brand and team.

The Cloud

The infamous phrase, “the cloud’. We have all seen the rooms where the network servers are housed. It definitely takes a master to understand and navigate that room. But, what happens if you don’t have the space? Investing in cloud storage will help with limited office space and keeping a smaller IT team on board when resources are slim.

Some best companies that offer great storage options with security are: Dropbox Business, Google Drive for Work, OneDrive by Microsoft, and Amazon.

All offer economical plans starting around $5.00 per month.

Business Operations

How can technology help alleviate the burden of accounting, payroll, general communication between staff, and handle special projects? The above tools are great choices for storage of important present and historical documents of the business, but investing in tools to help manage the process and present demands will help you and your team function day to day.

Google Drive is great for working on documents simultaneously with others with a record of changes with Google Sheets and Docs. Dropbox Business helps safely send documents that may have sensitive information.

Project management systems can help streamline the process of each department and assign responsibilities, which is important in every aspect of your business. Some options are: Basecamp, Asana, Wrike, and Teamwork. Pricing will range from business needs, system features and uses. These are all cloud based systems that work with just an assigned login and internet connection.

Instant messaging in this time of constant, quick communication is a needed item for every business, especially for those that are now in a remote setting. Slack, Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, Basecamp 3 (within the project management tool itself) are great options to keep in contact with your staff.

Bitrix24 is a tool that offers many day to day functions within one place such as, instant messaging, collaboration, project management, scheduling, document safety, staffing, and more. The beauty of this omni-channel system is that it also offers a full CRM platform with marketing capabilities and option for an online-store with customer support features. Their solutions team can create custom packages based upon your company, industry, and needs. Pricing is by features and online gigabyte storage.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation utilizes software that will alleviate manual implementation of marketing activity, such as: email deployment, social media postings, lead nurturing, and digital ads. Not only can these tactics be scheduled to preferred dates and times, but marketing automation comes with automating specific messages that are triggered after certain consumer activity – such as; thank you, birthday, anniversary, and suggested products in during online shopping trips.

Automation will not take away jobs – it will empower and allow jobs to become more efficient on your marketing team and within your company. Automation allows your team to free up their time from monotonous tasks and focus on how to drive business and sales for your company.

Software and platforms available for marketing automation can differ by the type of automation your company is looking for and the size of your company – all which provide a depth of analytics to help advance the automation practices.

Technology Advice helps break down what tools may fit the size of your company.

Artificial Intelligence Hosts

Artificial intelligence (AI) can give a business a competitive edge by improving the entire customer journey and data analysis as it frees up your company’s employees for more complex strategic work, similar to automation.

An example of a great enhancement for a company is the Chatbot. There is a connotation that a chatbot is a very negative and a tactic businesses should turn away from – fast. However, since their inception, the capabilities and sophistication of chatbots has grown immensely as artificial intelligence has developed. Chatbots for a small business can actually help qualify and nurture leads based upon the interaction and need to speak to the chatbot in the first place. It can become a great tactic for a constant stream of sales.

A hurdle that many small businesses will come across with implementing different AI tactics is the company’s technological infrastructure, which can be costly burden with the additional cost of staff to implement and maintain the equipment and software. Small businesses may be able to benefit from outside companies that offer infrastructure as a service (IaaS) that enable companies to use AI in simpler ways.

Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft all offer products that include AI capabilities that are hosted by that specific company and used by your company as needed.

Social Commerce

A method that is becoming more known and still being developed as the world of social media becomes larger and more complex. However, social commerce where the user has the ability to make a purchase within the social media platform (i.e. third-party company) without going to the company’s site.

Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are the platforms that are heavily integrating social commerce into their sites for their millions (if not billions of users). Facebook and Instagram are creating special online stores for companies and using their messenger capabilities to help stores complete the sale. Pinterest actually introduced “buyable” pins in 2015 and has the highest average sale of $50 across the platforms. The interesting note about Pinterest’s site and purchase content, is that very little of it is original content – due to how the site operates and the amount of “repinning” to boards users do.

Social media is definitely a mega player in the average user’s everyday life and would make sense that shopping, a social experience at its core, would be placed on a social channel. This can be very beneficial to a company whose products fit the need of the consumers online and can steward properly through these channels.

Technology Round Up

Technology plays a huge role in how your company operates and performs in your respective market. Without researching and implementing helpful technological tools, your company can fall behind and lose out on opportunities. Always evaluate the needs of your company (especially with the departments that will interact the most with the tool) versus the offerings of a product to ensure it will be truly effective in your desired outcomes as not only to produce results but be worth the money being spent in a specific tool.

One point that users of the tools that you will integrate in to your company is how user friendly it is and the accessibility of the program on a non-company issued device and mobile use. Workers have become even more available in recent years and since the COVID-19 pandemic. Being able to work while running an errand or going to an appointment with ease, is a highlight for many who will use the tool.

Keeping a watchful eye for systems that offer Lifetime Deals, where they have a special discounted price that will be the price you pay for however long you use that program. This is a great way to invest in a technology without the risk of the price increasing. A steady expense for a small business can be a deal-breaker! Incorporating an out clause for under-preforming tools can be put in your contract with any vendor to help eliminate costly agreement cancellations.

Contact Colleen Eakins Design for any questions or helpful suggestions for your business needs.