Small businesses are growing by leaps and bounds. The U.S. Small Business Administration estimates there are 30 million small businesses coast to coast. What each of these businesses does may differ, but what’s clear is that they can all benefit from new software technologies to help with their sustainability and growth.
Accounting Software
Small businesses have to rely on a steady stream of customers to stay in business. This means continually purchasing inventory, possible overhead costs, sales, and keeping track of receipts and other important documents. Accounting software has been around for a while, but it has quickly become a staple of small businesses. Today, many banks and other financial institutions will offer similar products, all of them geared to make keeping track of your finances that much easier.
Today’s accounting software allows you to simply take pictures of your receipts, checks, and purchase orders with your phone. Numbers instantaneously populate the accounting software and break down your expenditures, buying trends, sales forecasts, inventory reports, and so forth like magic.
Cloud Services
Whether you’re running a brick-and-mortar store or an online business, you’re more than likely tied into the internet in one way or another. It’s rare nowadays for anyone to be running a business without at least managing payments and inventory online, and most businesses are doing much more online, including running e-commerce, cloud-based services, intranets, customer or client portals, and so forth, even if they have a physical location.
Today, many online business services are cloud-based. The more services you run in a cloud, the greater the chances of security breaches, malfunctions, and data loss.
Customer Relationship Managers
Customer relationship managers (CRMs) have become very important to small businesses seeking growth. Allowing you to keep all of your customer data in one place, to schedule emails and calls, to integrate with email programs, and to build rapport with your customers, CRMs have changed the way people do business. Combine these kinds of software with marketing campaigns that are geared towards gaining new inbound leads and you have a system that maximizes sales while leveraging customer interest.
Name Matching Technology
Name matching programs can help companies detect fraud and comply with regulations, as well as helping with customer data management. Name matching software helps companies match customer names that have typos, alternate forms, or incorrect usage. Once your customer base is in the hundreds, it can be difficult to keep track of duplicates easily, so using the proper programs and software can keep your company from making costly mistakes. Name matching is often used by payment service providers or for international trade compliance.
Small businesses moving towards the second half of the 21st century are using internet-based technologies more and more to sustain and grow their businesses. Technology evolves quickly, so businesses must stay on the cutting edge of what works best to remain viable and competitive.