Latest technological developments and overall availability of reasonably priced high-tech to widest masses is certainly making an impact on every sphere of our lives so it is not that hard to conclude that business will be affected too. Older ones, without which it would be impossible to imagine the world in not that distant past, are now becoming obsolete and forgotten, new business are always on the rise and the still existing ones are trying to adapt and make most out of the situation in which they are operating. Here, we will focus on the small businesses and the correspondent technological trends for the 2015.
Increased use of mobile computing
Ever since the arrival of first smartphones mobile devices are trying to replace your personal computers and give you all of their advantages packed into something that can fit into your back pocket. With the upcoming release of Windows 10, which will be used both on personal computers and mobile devices, by Microsoft later this year that process may be finally over. Other thing that changed in smartphone industry over the years was the price tag of these devices and today they can be obtained at a bargain price. So, increased functionality and decreasing price tag can only amount to more mobile computing everywhere around the globe.
Smart Inventory Management
According to recent researches up to 46% of companies with 11 to 500 employees are not tracking their inventory, which causes slow but undeniable money burn and leads to more serious consequences. With poor inventory management being one of the major reasons for failure of small companies, we can hope to see increased technology involvement in this area. There are some inventory management tools, such as Wasp Inventory Control, Fishbowl Inventory and Advanced Pro Inventory Management, already out there. We can expect more similar offerings and their faster rate of adoption in the following period.
More Attention to Network Security
Technology most definitely changed the way we do business and provided us with numerous opportunities which would be impossible otherwise, but we must notice that technology’s increased involvement in business has left us opened to cyber crimes. Small businesses are not always adequately equipped to deal with those threats because they don’t have same amount of resources as larger companies. As a matter of fact only 9% of businesses have mobile security and less than a half have any kind of e-mail security. Considering all the incidents that happened in recent years for these reasons, smaller business and the companies that are providing security will cooperate even more to their mutual benefit.
Changes in Marketing Means and Methods
No matter how our product and service is good, if we are not doing the marketing right, no one will hear the message and we are running a risk of failing. This applies to smaller businesses even more. That’s why we will see the rise of Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) suits. Various companies that are providing printing services in Melbourne, Brisbane and other major Australian cites are currently hosting are providing their clients with robust and rich with features websites where they can create content and do online previews which is the service that is today used by many small business to effectively create marketing material. This will make printing-on-demand and interactive printing more prominent part of marketing strategies and affect how we communicate our products and services outside the virtual space.
Reduction of On-Premises Technology
If we look back for the last 15 years we can easily see that impact of technological developments affected the way how small businesses operate the most. Arrival of the cloud-based technologies is one of the best examples. Opportunity to have a successful and fully functional network of associates and employees working on some projects, without investing huge amounts of money into buying and maintaining expensive hardware was surely a life-boat used by many companies to remain profitable and viable. We can only expect others to keep boarding and decrease usage of on-premises technologies in the favor of cloud based technologies.
It is easily noticeable, even without some significant insight into business landscape, that developing technologies are providing great number of opportunities for small businesses to outgrow their molds and make significant impact even with limited resources. Winners will be separated from the sinners only by the ability to notice and utilize rising technology trends. So keep these five on your radar.