As a small business owner, you’re a jack of all trades. Your responsibilities usually involve finance management, lead generation, employee management, marketing strategies, and so forth. Therefore, to streamline your business operations and grow your business, you need to invest in the right tools.
Let’s take a look at some powerful technologies you can use to maximize your small business’ performance.
1. Protecting Sensitive Data
Small businesses often become victims of cybercriminals. According to some recent statistics, the number of small business breaches skyrocketed by 424% in 2018. This happens for a good reason – small businesses don’t take their online security seriously. Most of them invest less than $500 per year on cybersecurity tools, while 70% of them don’t even have a disaster recovery plan.
To avoid becoming the next victim of a cyberattack, you need to equip yourself with powerful cybersecurity tools, including:
- A VPN (Virtual Private Network) that masks your IP address and redirects your traffic to another server.
- Encryption tools ensure that, even if a hacker intercepts and steals your data, they won’t be able to decode and use it.
- Anti-malware software is designed to prevent, identify, and remove malicious files.
- Penetration testing tools perform a simulated cyber attack to let you identify the weakest points in your network.
- Web content filtering tools control traffic, proxies, URLs, and information and perform behavior analysis. They limit your employees’ use of the internet and prevent them from downloading suspicious content.
2. Managing Projects Efficiently
Even though project management is changing fast, many businesses still don’t leverage these advancements. According to Wellingtone’s survey, only 22% of companies have switched to project management software. If you’re not one of them, it’s time to rethink your decisions.
With project management tools like Basecamp, Asana, or Trello, you can initiate, plan, execute, and control your projects more effectively. These tools give you the opportunity to create multiple projects, add the right employees to each project, create lists within projects, and assign tasks.
For your employees, this means easier communications and data sharing. They can leave comments and attach files faster, in real-time. Above all, they will receive notifications about the projects relevant to them. For project managers, these tools mean a chance to track their projects’ progress and teams’ performance more efficiently.
3. Improving Internet Connections
To increase workplace productivity, you need to equip your teams with the right tools. And, one of them is certainly fast internet connections. The research study by MonsterCloud interviewed 2,000 office employees. They found that 60% of employees consider slow Wi-Fi or internet connection speeds extremely frustrating.
The telecommunications sector is evolving impressively fast. One such example is Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), rolled by the Federal Government. This is a faster and more reliable broadband network that is about to replace the existing landline network. Once your neighborhood becomes NBN-friendly, you will have 18 months to switch to it. Make sure you choose NBN plans and providers on time. Last-minute changes may mean your employees won’t have the internet connection until your new service is activated.
4. Increasing Customer Satisfaction
Customer relationship management (CRM) tools will manage your company’s interactions with leads and customers. Their main goal is to improve customer experiences, streamline your processes, and build stronger relationships with your target audiences.
Namely, to grow your business, you will collect your customer data from different sources, such as your sales, customer service, marketing, social networks, and so forth. One of the greatest challenges is turning this data into useful business information. With CRM, you can create customizable dashboards that will inform you about your customers’ previous purchases, the status of their orders, any major customer support problems, and so forth.
Above all, CRM tools have now become more sophisticated and can be integrated with your favorite business management tools, such as apps for surveying, billing, accounting, document signing, and so forth.
Given that, it’s not surprising that, when implemented properly, CRM tools can boost your business’ performance and bottom line on multiple levels. According to Salesforce, a CRM tool can increase customer satisfaction by 35%, revenue by 25%, and sales by 30%.
5. Migrating to the Cloud
In 2019, cloud technologies went mainstream. Statistics say that the majority of businesses have already moved their operations and applications to the cloud. According to Rightscale, 81% of companies have a multi-cloud strategy in place. That’s not surprising at all, given that the cloud is more affordable and scalable than mainstream on-premise infrastructures.
For starters, you will need to choose the right type of cloud, depending on your business’ budget and needs. For example, companies with limited budgets often choose public cloud infrastructures that are more affordable. In that case, you would share the server space with other users, which may impact both your business’ performance and data security.
On the other hand, with the private cloud, you would be the only one using the server space. Even though the private cloud is pricier, it delivers greater scalability and data security.
Many businesses decide to combine private and public cloud solutions, based on the importance of the data they store. They even invest in hybrid clouds – a combination of on-premise infrastructures, private clouds, and public clouds.
Over to You
Implementing new business technologies will help you gain a competitive advantage, boost workplace productivity, and increase customer experiences. And, the tips and tools mentioned above may help. Sure, don’t forget that this is just the tip of the iceberg. To maximize your business performance, you should keep track of new technologies regularly and choose ones that meet your business’ needs.
What technologies do you invest in as a small business owner? We’d like to hear from you!
