How SMEs Leverage Latest Technologies to Address Business Success

With markets becoming more competitive, many small and medium-sized enterprises adopt technologies to easily change and stay relevant.

From using automation to automating mundane tasks, cloud technology in place of physical servers, and technology adoption by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is increasing.

Let us read and understand why it is essential for SMEs to adopt technologies and what technologies are essential for business success.

Why do SMEs need to adopt emerging technologies?

The World Bank estimates that SMEs represent 90% of global businesses and over 50% of employment.

The World Bank says. This number is increasing with each passing year. Not wanting to be left behind, SMEs constantly look for ways to maximize their profits without compromising on quality, cost or efficiency.

If you are unaware of the many attractive benefits of adopting technology, SMEs should embrace the emerging technology.

1. Foster Agility and Adaptability

Research from McKinsey, shows that agile organizations have a 70 percent chance of being in the top quartile of organizational health.

What is Agility? Businesses can adapt quickly. It indicates the ability of the business to identify and maximize opportunities. Since SMEs lack the resources that many large enterprises have, agility is a defining factor that ensures they keep pace with changing technologies, even helping them stay ahead of the competition .

For example, artificial intelligence technologies are great at accomplishing customer deliveries on time, regardless of circumstances.

2. Contribution to Business Growth

IT can serve as one of the most important growth drivers for business revenue and operations. Many new technological tools help the organization to reach a wider target audience and explore further business opportunities.

3. Bring More Efficiency

IT-enabled processes reduce the time, effort and expense of performing tasks manually. In addition, error elimination, work accuracy and streamlined processes increase efficiency.

4. Make Informed Decisions

Many modern technologies like big data and ML can help you gain insight into important business trends and forecasts. Once you get the right insights, you can steer your spending in the right direction. For example, such technology can predict machine failure in manufacturing.

5. Reduce Operating Costs

You can significantly reduce your business operating and marketing expenses when you invest in technology. For example, digital marketing is done at a fraction of the cost. In addition, the cloud removes the need for physical servers and the cost of their maintenance.

6. Compete Globally

We are in an era when companies around the world are leveraging technology to stay ahead. Businesses in the USA, UK, Europe, China and elsewhere use modern technological advances in almost every field to increase their efficiency and optimize performance.

SMEs cannot be left behind in this competition. The only way to do this is by adopting advanced technologies.

7 emerging technologies SMEs can leverage for business success

There are many great tech tools for entrepreneurs and small businesses to take advantage of and unlock the competitive edge in today's changing business landscape. they are:

1. Cloud

Cloud technology is no longer the only favorite for large-scale businesses; Small and medium companies are adopting it fast.

Benefits that are hard to ignore compel entrepreneurs to embrace cloud services and transform their businesses. After all, more and more budding SMEs want limiting costs, improved data security, flexible storage, zero downtime, resource optimization and thorough resource mapping.

Cloud provides innovative ways for SMEs to stay relevant and maximize profits without compromising on cost or efficiency.

Another reason why cloud platforms have become a perfect fit for small and medium enterprises is that it allows them to do business computing without the need to invest in hardware infrastructure and trained staff.

2. Automation

Business process automation is no longer just for medium and enterprise sized businesses. Today, SMEs readily adopt automation solutions to increase efficiency.

One of the main reasons is that automation enables all aspects of a business to automatically perform tasks that an employee would otherwise have to do manually.

From capturing business to closing sales, serving customers, running marketing campaigns, sending appointment reminders to checking other routine office tasks, the list is endless where automation is helpful.

With automated processes, small business owners spend their time growing the business, cutting costs and increasing employee productivity.

3. AI and ML

SMEs and startups are now deploying intelligent AI algorithms and data mining tools to extract and mine huge amounts of data for their benefit.

If you are a startup, there are many areas where AI/ML is beneficial.

You may consider introducing Intelligent Voice Recognition Systems or chatbots for service customers. This means that as repeated customer requests are addressed by technology, employee productivity improves. Furthermore, ML algorithms process data quickly and generate insights faster. Therefore, predictive analysis is another area where this technique is helpful.

4. Cyber ​​Security Techniques

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in global cyber threats. Today, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the target of new cyber attacks. But unfortunately, cybercrime prevention is generally neglected in this area.

One of the primary reasons for the rise in cyberattacks is remote working. Businesses that have not yet taken the necessary precautions are vulnerable to these attacks.

This is why a cyber security strategy has become imperative to keep your business running. Furthermore, it is a technology that must be constantly developed to protect against hackers, so upgrading it once is not enough.

It will help if you consider technical tools for network security, firewalls, anti-viruses for applications and computers, data encryption, security monitoring, logging and alert systems, and system backups.

Another concern for businesses is the protection of customer information, intellectual property and any other information important to financial gain.

5. Online Payment

It is common for businesses to send/receive money via the Internet.

If your business only uses old payment gateways, it will soon lag behind the rest of the world. Also, if you haven't given this opportunity to your customers yet, you may lose many of your valuable customers and see your reputation decline.

SMEs understand the importance of adopting technology to reduce the administrative burden on their business. Online payment is an essential part of the same.

Check where your business stands in the digital journey. For example, do you still use paper-based payment processes? Or, if you have an electronic payment system but use sub-optimal processes?

Paper-based payments and manual processes increase your administrative costs, causing inconvenience to your customers and suppliers.

Conversely, online payments provide a significant increase in the profitability and growth of your business by providing the following:

• An improved customer experience (such as accepting payments from any location via a smartphone)
• Reduction in transaction costs
• Record retention through cloud-hosted data
• Competitive advantage by making your business accessible to overseas markets.

6. Virtual Workspace

A dedicated office is required for your business to be legitimate, but the costs associated with renting it, buying office equipment, paying utility bills, etc., cause a financial burden on the startup.

This is a challenge that most SMBs face.

A virtual workspace provides all the services that a traditional brick and mortar office space provides at a much lower cost. As a result, virtual offices are an ideal option for small businesses looking to establish a corporate image.

While financial leverage is an advantage, it is not the only reason virtual workspaces are becoming popular. A virtual office provides a modern solution for businesses ready to create a collaborative workspace with benefits such as remote working, talent mobility, connectivity and even employee well-being.

With virtual space, you can take the liberty of running your office online as the workforce can work from different locations. You need to use other apps to coordinate easily and efficiently with your teams.

7. Beacon

SMEs find beacons (a small Bluetooth device) an easy technology to invest in to improve their user experience.

For those who are not very familiar with this technology, beacons are small-sized, Bluetooth-enabled, wireless, proximity devices that a business can connect to its premises. The beacon uses Bluetooth low energy (BLE) signals to track things and people and provide contextual information when its target is within range.

Areas where beacons might work well for you:

• Accurately find/track things inside the house. In short, beacons work indoors, which Google Maps does for outdoors.
• Engage customers by triggering events on your smartphones and other devices. For example, send them information about special offers, deals, targeted campaigns or shopping suggestions.
• Collect reliable data about your customer behavior and retarget them after they leave the premises.

Beacon adoption opportunities go beyond just retail. Businesses in sectors like transportation, logistics, hospitality, education, finance etc are set to benefit from this.

According to 2020 Emergen research, beacon technology has started showing impressive growth. In 2019, the global beacon tech market size was USD 2.10 billion. By 2027, this value is expected to touch USD 35.15 billion with a CAGR of 44.1%.

Embrace emerging technologies and reshape your business with Quytech

When used skillfully, technology can be your best bet to optimize your available resources, grow, and succeed.

Collaborate with us at Imaginovation and we'll help you find the right combination of technology for you, and reshape your business!

Whether it's cloud, AI/ML, digital payments, an innovative mobile app, AR/VR, or any other technology, we'll help you invest strategically.

Quytech is an award-winning app development company with extensive experience in creating remarkable digital success stories for diverse companies.

Let's talk: [email protected]