Competitive Advantage

With the inclusion of smart, relevant and efficient systems, quite often the right mix of people, systems and processes, can create greater customer value and a competitive advantage for businesses over their competitors. With that opportunity in mind, it becomes a strategic decision to embrace technology in parts of your business where it can make a difference. For small businesses, the affordability of cloud technology allows them the luxury of smart efficient systems that in the past were reserved for only larger businesses.

Areas where cloud technology could benefit your business!

Accounting – Stock management – Job management – CRM – Data management – Communication-

Essentially all areas of business can now be supported with cloud technology with hundreds of applications available to serve just about any specific business need. With advances in smart phones comes greater power, mobility, connectability and flexibility, all packaged in a small easy to carry device, perfect for small businesses and their active owners, operators and staff. The same applies to desktop hardware, nowadays it doesn’t matter where you are working, as long as you have access to the internet, you have access to your business applications.

Business improvement and growth

The focus for businesses when looking to improve performance and grow is predominantly around securing efficiencies in operation, improving quality, being able to analyse results, being more adaptable, scalability, consistent and flexible, and by increasing productivity and accuracy. The tech options available to help improve the way you operate and become more scalable and flexible, particularly in small businesses, are huge now and still growing. They’re affordable, quite often easy to set up and use and require very little up-front investment. It really is changing the face of the small business environment at least for those with an appetite to adopt it.

Concerns

There are still concerns in using this technology, particularly around data security, systems accessibility and systems security. They are concerns that need to be taken seriously, but managed properly, they can be monitored and the risks mitigated.

Where to Start!

Question is where do you start and how do you go about finding the right options, especially if there are so many available. The starting steps are simple enough to follow:

First, define what you do and how you currently do it

Then, identify the problem areas, bottle necks, challenges associated with the current way you do things. This by definition should almost define the criteria from which you search for a solution and measure its appropriateness. An important consideration in all of this is the ability of the different applications to talk to each other, i.e. integrate and cohabitate.

How can we help?

We can help evaluate your current situation, offer insight into some of the options that are available to your business and once a decision is made around what systems to go for, help integrate these systems and processes into your business.

Cloud technology, for small businesses in particular, is the way to go. The options are wide reaching which should encourage business owners to review how they currently operate and how embracing some of the technology available can actually make a difference to your business.