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Today, small businesses are facing a queer challenge.
On the one hand, they now have access to all the technology that was the forte of global. Fortune 500 companies just a few years ago in their hands.
While on the other a wide range of mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and other devices are leveling the playing field between small businesses and the global organizations.
Mobile Devices and SMBs – A New Wave
Some examples are the efficiency of mobile devices in communicating with other team members of the small business organization, using mobile technology for internal development and staying ahead of the competition, providing business benefits such as delivering quotations, making presentations, etc., assisting in organizational marketing functions etc.
Ecommerce Services
Additionally, mobile devices can also be used to provide a wide range of commerce/ecommerce services such as mobile ticketing, content purchase and delivery, product delivery, a wide array of location based services, information services, mobile banking, mobile brokerage, and mobile purchases. All these examples are crucial and vital to a huge range of businesses that operate in any urban, suburban or rural scenarios across the world.
Healthcare Industry
Mobile devices have also become a greatly utilized piece of technology in the healthcare industry. For example, becoming a registered NDIS provider in the healthcare sector can result in onboarding a large team. To adapt to this, technology such as caregiver apps are created to provide shift rostering and other useful features that can make organizing and scheduling rotas a much more streamlined task. Using this technology with the ease of an app on a mobile phone makes everything much more accessible for everyone involved.
Popularity in Younger Workforce
Additionally, as younger workforce becomes more commonplace in organizations around the world, the need for mobile solutions via mobile technology – the preferred devices of the younger generation such as smart phones and tablets – become more and more omnipresent. Therefore, it is useless for bosses and administrators to fight the new wave of mobile devices in the office – there is no use offering the mobile phone, tablets, smartphones, and other such devices any resistance.
In fact, many small and medium businesses point out that mobile device such as smart phones are essential to the success of their business. Hence, mobile solutions have found their way into the technology budgets of small businesses in the past few years. Hence, SMBs actually welcome the advent of the mobile technology as a welcome addition to the business tools that are in deployment already. According to Laurie McCabe, who is an analyst with the SMB group, over 60% of SMBs surveyed said that mobile solutions are critical to business with a growing majority of them regarding mobile solutions are “essential business enablers”.
For those already in the business world, this development does not bring in any surprises. In fact according to a 2012 Harris Interactive Poll, nearly three quarters of the more than 500 small businesses said that mobile devices were crucial to their firm’s future success.
Additionally, they mentioned that mobile devices clearly benefited the bottom line. Two thirds of the respondents agreed that the efficiency of their business improved due to mobile phones. Additionally, the functionality that mobile devices provided could not be delivered as efficiently through other devices.
Some examples are the efficiency of mobile devices in communicating with other team members of the small business organization, using mobile technology for internal development and staying ahead of the competition, providing business benefits such as delivering quotations, making presentations, etc., assisting in organizational marketing functions etc.
Mobile Technology & SMBs – Ushering in a Revolution
Hence, most entrepreneurs and small business owners agree that mobile technology has, and is even continuing to revolutionize the way that business is done. In a recent AT&T and Entrepreneurship Council poll, a few interesting trends relating to mobile technology were discovered:
- Smartphones and tablets are responsible for saving time as well as money to the tune of around 2 billion hours and more than $ 65 billion each year.
- Around 94% of small businesses use smartphone technology to conduct business each year.
- Most small businesses use smartphone apps to increase productivity.
- Their saving is around $ 6,000 a year on an average.
Today, many people the world over are moving towards mobile technology. With this technology, business owners now are able to accomplish a lot more than what they could do previously. With mobile phones, it is now possible to deploy apps rather than spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for an overly sophisticated program. Hence, Mobile technologies do not include just smartphones and mobile apps, but also include other technologies as well.
Besides, smartphones include apps, navigation, and other sophisticated functions that have made these devices the preferred choice for businesses utilizing mobile technology all over the world. Even tablets, which are a relatively new entrant in the mobile technology field, are now replacing the desktop computer as a viable alternative. Hence, it is possible to access apps on the go with a tablet and it surely is not a larger version of a smartphone!
Other Alternatives
Today, cloud technology is a tool that has yet to achieve its complete potential. This is a tool offers small businesses immense possibilities. Presently, cloud technology can be put to a wide array of uses such as – mobile computing, data backup and several others. Hence, if you want to move from physical servers to the cloud, then this technology can be a big as well as an advantageous decision for any small business.
Again, another alternative is the utilization of mobile devices for POS and mobile credit card processing. The days of bulky POS systems especially for small businesses are slowly but surely ending! With the emergence of new technologies, that process credit cards by using a smartphone or tablet, the use of traditional POS systems will soon end.
GPS, which is an innovative feature that is bundled with most mobile devices, can help users to plan better delivery methods and routes, track shipments, and also save money, time, as well as other resources.
Conclusion
Thus, mobile technology has been a very useful tool for SMBs and the introduction of various mobile devices has brought in a much-needed change in how SMBs conduct their business throughout the world. However, there is more to come as there is a lot if innovation going on in the field of mobile technology.
These innovations will surely transform the way that business is conducted throughout the world, much for the advantage and betterment of small businesses globally.
