No matter how large or small your business is, technology can help you do more with less. In fact, technology may actually be a bigger boon to smaller businesses than larger ones. Technology can help you better track your finances, schedule more efficiently and even cut down on the time you spend doing routine tasks. It can also give you insights into how to maximize productivity or even market more effectively. While technology will never be able to do what you do, it can help you do what you do better. Here are 4 ways your business can do better by embracing technology.
Better Financial Management
Businesses ultimately fail for one and only one reason: they run out of money. Just making money is not enough, you also have to manage it well. Square is just one example of how technology is helping even the smallest of businesses. First Square introduced a simple card reader so anyone could accept credit card payments with just a smartphone. Then they introduced an entire cash register system that could be run on an iPad. Now, Square can be fully integrated with Quickbooks, which offers powerful analytics to help small businesses boom.
Better Human Resource Management
Regardless of whether you have one employee or 50 or don’t have any employees at all, the truth is no business runs without humans. Whether you need to coordinate a group of freelancers working on a marketing campaign or building a website for you or manage a team of employees, technology can help you do it all. From scheduling staff to pre-screening employee candidates to assigning and prioritizing tasks, technology can turn one person into an entire management team.
Better Marketing
From social media marketing to SMS marketing, technology is helping small businesses have big business impact. Small businesses may actually have an advantage when it comes to SMS marketing because your customers are more likely to give you their phone number in addition to their email address. If they do give you their phone number, it means they want to hear from you, so if they give it to you, you should be using it. Social media marketing can help gain you new customers, but SMS marketing can help establish loyalty from the ones you already have. Your social media efforts can be handled in-house, but you may need to find a company that provides SMS services for small businesses to help with that form of marketing.
These are just a few of the ways that technology is helping businesses large and small, but the list is much longer. From automating tasks to increasing efficiency, technology can help small businesses run more efficiently or even turn them into large ones.