Entrepreneurs are operating in a digital-first business world. Additionally, any small and medium-sized companies not using up-to-date technologies or digital tools are only making it harder for themselves to grow and succeed.
Today, there are countless cost-effective digital tools on the market that come with a short learning curve. Likewise, if your business incorporates the right solutions, you might be surprised how quickly you’ll experience healthy growth. So, below we share five areas in which every SME should consider incorporating digital tech.
1. Accounting
You don’t have to be a business owner for long to understand the importance of money management. Moreover, making one bad decision or overlooking a single detail can put your company in a poor financial position and hinder its ability to grow.
Fortunately, as Geekflare points out, there are cloud-based accounting solutions to help you deliver electronic invoices to customers, which can minimize late payments and improve cash flow. Moreover, some software will even let you store and categorize your receipts to help you maximize tax deductions. So, look for an integrated accounting system that works alongside your other digital tools.
2. Business Processes
Business process management (BPM) is a discipline that ultimately helps companies optimize their workflows. By automating menial tasks, BPM can allow your team to streamline business operations that were once laborious. And since it frees up your employees’ time for working on more purposeful tasks, it should be relatively easy to get your team on board. Create a BPM framework, regularly track its effectiveness, and act on the monitoring data to continuously improve each process.
3. Mobile Apps
More and more small and medium-sized businesses are developing mobile apps. The primary reason is that it can help your business grow in virtually every aspect. If you’re wondering whether your SME needs to build an app, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you want customers to have an easier time finding you?
- Do you want to facilitate more brand loyalty?
- Could you benefit from collecting more data to personalize the customer experience?
- Would you like to provide customers with a smoother shopping experience and easier payment processing?
- Do you need to build your social media presence?
Developing a mobile app can help your business in all these areas. Also, considering how much it can spur growth, the upfront investment of hiring a professional web developer will quickly pay off.
4. Marketing
No matter how unique and high-quality your product or services are, your SME will not stand the test of time without implementing impactful marketing strategies. Fortunately, as POWR notes, plenty of digital tools can help your team devise and execute marketing campaigns that boost your customer base. So, research the many tools on the market related to these essential marketing disciplines:
- Website building
- Web analytics
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Lead generation
One type of marketing you shouldn’t neglect is content marketing. Because through well-written blog posts and social media updates, you can reach a large audience and communicate directly with potential customers. This allows you to build awareness about your products or services, answer common questions, and provide valuable information to your target audience. Also, it’s easy to learn more about content marketing strategies.
5. Collaboration
Lastly, your team needs software that makes communication and collaboration simple and easy. The right solutions will foster better teamwork on many different tasks — general or specialized.
Moreover, there’s no denying collaboration is crucial in the workplace, which is why every SME should consider adding collaboration tools to their arsenal. Likewise, any software that can boost productivity and efficiency is worth exploring, whether you need video conferencing, project management, cloud document storage, team chat, or time tracking. Some of the top products available include Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Basecamp, and Slack.
You don’t want your SME to fall behind in the digital-first world. So, to position your team for long-term growth and success, make sure you invest in any software that will improve your decision-making, money management, customer experience, content marketing strategies, and collaboration. You might be surprised how quickly your managers and employees can adopt some of the tools above. You’ll also realize substantial improvements in no time.