Trends SMB Follow in 2020. Part 2
Each day the market is becoming more and more competitive. That is why small and medium-sized businesses must keep abreast with the times. Let's dive into 5 key business trends that business owners are actively following to achieve their goals. Such a strategy will allow you to gain a competitive advantage and be ready for the business challenges your team members may face.
#1 New opportunities for SMBs
Market flexibility and ever-changing working conditions spur small and medium-sized businesses into investing in products that improve staff recruitment and productivity.
As mentioned above, tools based on AI and ML technologies are especially popular for SBMs activity. For example, companies actively use them to automate work processes and reduce human error. It applies to manual data entry, paperwork, form filling, accounting or manual KPI calculation.
Today's situation related to COVID-19 made many teams switch to remote work. Therefore, the necessity for such tools is constantly growing, because they allow the team to be in touch via an online messenger, ensure instant work file sharing, make last-period forecasts, or prepare a report for colleague or management in a matter of seconds.
#2 Choosing hybrid models for flexible business activity
As a rule, small and medium-sized businesses store data on local servers because they think it ensures security and meets internal requirements for speed and performance. However, cloud solutions are the best choice according to other companies. More and more business processes are now being moved to the cloud. It helps work with documents flexibly, store data, be in touch with customers, or communicate with colleagues using the one channel, performing long-term operations together.
With cloud-based solutions, you can manage and monitor assets more conveniently. It also allows your team to store all work-related documents in one place and prevent rolling in processes when looking for everything in different places. Since most business owners are worried about data security, they decide to apply hybrid management models using local and cloud software simultaneously. In this case, local software is used to manage analytics, finances, or accounting, and cloud solutions are used for low-security and bulky tasks.
#3 Using Internet of Things capabilities
Although 5G is associated primarily with ultra-fast Internet connection or virtual reality, small and medium-sized businesses actively use its advantages for their goals. Business owners note miscellaneous benefits of using the Internet of Things, for example improving the customer service quality, improving transparency within the company, as well as increasing profit.
The IoT offers opportunities to ensure security and control. In addition, such technologies can optimize processes, reduce expenses and improve products. Such systems allow business owners to access data from IoT devices in real-time and adjust business processes. Obtained and analyzed information via IoT tools helps you allocate and control all of your company's resources.
#4 New ways for finance and accounting management
It is important for most small and medium-sized companies to ensure that the accounting system produced the most accurate results. Therefore, accounting and financial management software play an important role in achieving business goals. Thanks to these solutions you can track daily activity, manage all invoices in one place, monitor budgets and costs to optimize the workflow, and even more.
Moreover, the integration of online accounting services coupled with cloud finance or payment systems allows managers to get updates after each real-time transaction. In this way, employees can control the entire financial chain and manage business processes more consciously and efficiently by obtaining data twice faster.
#5 Converged IT infrastructure
A converged IT infrastructure combines computing, storage, networking, virtualization, security, and data protection into a single unified system. Thus, it allows small and medium-sized businesses to use their computing resources more efficiently and at a lower price, reducing management costs. Due to such an infrastructure implementation, the business can respond to consumer requests timely, adapt flexibly to market changes and develop steadily.
Avanga BPA system is the tool that accelerates your running flow and helps keep up with the latest trends. Just try it by applying the free demo version. If you want to get more information about what we do - don’t hesitate to reach us out!
