We know technology is an important factor in the world we live in now. It is advancing at a faster pace than we could’ve anticipated. So how can technology be utilised by small businesses to make them more efficient and propel them towards new growth opportunities?
Although you may think technology is there to distract you from doing your job or that it makes you lazy. However, the technology is there to make us work smarter and increase our productivity.
Great Marketing Tool
Whether using social media, online advertising or email marketing, businesses who are connecting with their customers digitally are the ones who are seeing greater success.
As a small business owner, you might already have established a website to promote your business. However, you must realise that using technology to promote your business is not just limited to establishing a website. It is becoming increasingly important to establish an online presence and improve your business’s findability in the search engines. Search Engine Optimisation is becoming increasingly important to enhance your business’s ability to be easily searched by customers. This will help you build a larger client base over a period.
Moreover, identify a social media platform, like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and now Pinterest, one that will work best for you and make use of it to promote your business consistently. It will also be quite remarkable if you can keep up a blog. These are so convenient and easily manageable by most small businesses.
Furthermore, you can disclose exciting news about new products or services or information about your achievements on these social media platforms. Take advantage to upload photos or videos that are relevant to your news. Also, look out for local opportunities in online news publications or local industry newsletters and blogs to feature news about your business.
These are the most cost effective way to establish your online presence, communicate with your customers and promote your business.
Boost Productivity
In some instances, technology can be a little distractive and prevent you from doing your daily business activities. If you are about to prepare a quotation to send to a new customer or just about to email an invoice to your existing customer, you might get distracted and spend too much time on social networks or casual browsing and not do the actual work you intended. Even if you do the work, it may not be in the time you hoped to have finished it.
However, in many cases, technology can improve yours and your employees’ productivity. By starting to use to-do list applications such as Todoist, you can complete your projects on time. These applications allow you to write down tasks and prioritise them based on deadlines. If you are a small accountancy firm, you might have to deal with different tax deadlines for clients. Making use of these project management apps will enable you to deliver work on time, avoid any penalties arising and upsetting your clients.
With technology on your side, it’s easier to make sure you won’t forget when you have several projects to juggle with.
Encourage Remote Working Through Portable Office
With some firm knowledge in the digital sector, remote working can also become an opportunity for micro enterprises. This will allow you and if you have any employees, for them to work from different locations. With the advancements in technology we see now, remote running, online project management and video conferencing is much more practical than before.
Take on a hosted desktop solution. This way, you can gain access to all your folders, files and applications immediately from any device with an internet connection. And this is completely secure. This makes you more flexible and it’s no different to working in your office. It doesn’t require significant investment either. All you need is a simple laptop, as the processing is all done in the cloud.
Technology is all everywhere around us. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that businesses who embrace it will be the ones who become more successful.
Southside Accountants in Wimbledon and London are small business accountants.
Written by Guest Blogger: Nisha Kamalanathan.
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