According to the Small Business Association (SBA), about 66% of small businesses fail in the first ten years.
The figure is quite alarming.
Especially if you’re a small business owner.
That is why when you’re running your small business, you need all the help you can get to optimize your process, increase your productivity/efficiency, and improve how you’re doing things overall.
That’s where the various technologies available on the internet comes in.
To help you amp things up a notch, we’re going to cover several technologies that small business owners can use to take their businesses to greater heights.
1. Accounting Tools
“Accounting is the language of business.”
Considering how that quote came from Warren Buffet himself, anyone would be inclined to believe it.
If you want to take your small business to stay afloat, let alone succeed, you need to learn its language — accounting.
What’s more, if you want to increase your efficiency in accounting, you need to have the right accounting tools in place.
Here’s the thing…
If you do your accounting manually, as in, you use pen and paper or even use an excel sheet for logging, tracking, and crunching your numbers, chances are, you’ll be overwhelmed.
If you use an accounting software, on the other hand, you won’t have to crunch the numbers manually — it does the computation for you.
You also won’t have to use hundreds of spreadsheets (or pieces of paper) — everything will be stored in the software, and you can view them in just a matter of clicks.
Of course, these are just some of the many benefits you can enjoy from using an accounting software.
With the right accounting tool, you’d be able to stay on top of your business’ finances.
2. Online Scheduling Tools
If you survived all this time without using an online scheduling tool, that’s great.
However, I’d wager that you left quite a lot of money on the table.
Not just that, but I also suspect that you burned quite a lot of your time (possibly without you knowing it) by manually setting up appointment bookings or having to go back and forth with your prospective clients so that they can book you on a schedule that works for the both of you.
The thing with online scheduling tools such as Meetingbird alternative, can do such fantastic jobs at increasing your productivity and closing sales.
For example, instead of spending minutes on appointment booking, you can set everything up in 30 seconds or less.
It’s also worth pointing out that people aren’t eager to part ways with their money. Even if your prospective client is trying to book you, they can still be trying to convince themselves (mentally) not push through with the booking since they’d have to pay you if everything pans-out right.
If they can’t book you immediately, and they’d have to go through countless hoops and hurdles just to set the appointment, you’re just giving them more reasons not to click away.
When it comes to appointment bookings, you need to make it dead easy for your leads. The sooner they book you, the higher your chances are of closing the deal.
(You can read more about online scheduling software and how you can benefit from it in this article.)
3. Data Tracking And Analytics Tools
“If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It.”
Peter Drucker hit the nail on the head with that one-liner.
Regardless of the size of your business, you can’t afford not to measure. Foregoing this means you’d be flying your business blind.
It’s like flying or piloting an airplane without knowing how to read the meters/dials.
You wouldn’t know if you’re flying too low, too fast, or too high (among other things) — that right there is a recipe for disaster.
To help you overcome flying your business “blind,” you need data tracking and analytics technologies in your small business arsenal.
These tools will help you determine — through hard cold numbers — if you’re winning or losing in business.
It tells you which marketing methods you’re using are bringing you meaningful returns.
Which among your products are worth building upon and which are worth discarding.
It tells you whether or not you’re getting value out of your investment, etc.
Since you’re dealing with numbers, you can avoid having to guess how your business is doing.
What’s more, you can avoid falling for the trap of blind optimism, which will lead you to think that things are looking up (or are going to start picking up soon), when it won’t really.
4. Project Management Tools
There is so much value in having a single place where you can work on your projects.
That’s the reason why businesses are keen on renting an office space — so everyone can work in the same place.
And that’s also why businessmen and women (or managers) love project management tools — it’s where their virtual teams converge and get things done.
With the help of project management tools, small business owners can forget about installing multiple instant messaging or cloud storage platforms (among other software programs). They can just log into their chosen project management tool and be connected with their entire team from that one place.
What’s more, most project management tools have cloud storage, reporting, and task management tools — it really is like a virtual office space on steroids.
What’s Next?
With how dynamic running a small business can be, it would be impossible for us to condense all the technologies that small businesses can use to grow their venture in a single article.
The four points above are far from being complete.
However, I’ll tell you that if you used these four technologies, you are bound to see your business grow one way or the other.
You’d be able to:
- Stay on top of your finances.
- Increase your productivity.
- Schedule appointments faster.
- Optimize how your team collaborates.
- And determine (and adjust) the parts of your business that needs to be improved.
If you have questions or ideas that you’d like to share with the community, please share them in the comments section below. Cheers!
