How Small Businesses Are Looking to Grow Again After Covid-19
small business owners are often bringing work home, running back to the shop after hours, or fretting about taking personal or vacation time. Nowadays business owners can tap technology to realign work-life balance.
There are quite a few ways technology can serve as a tool for small business owners to step away from the grind, recalibrate work-life balance and boost productivity. Here are some ideas for using technology to de-stress and add more time to your day.
Use virtual collaboration
Collaboration, either between employees or clients, can get obstructed with constant back-and-forth and endless email chains that suck up time and increase the likelihood of errors. Collaboration apps like Microsoft Office 365, reduce process cycles and enhance collaboration.
Automate, automate, automate
The administrative tasks handled by many small business owners add up to the equivalent of a full-time employee’s workload. Business process automation, or using technology to automate manual parts of day-to-day work, is a growing practice with more tools created to reduce the many small tasks that tend to drag a business down. Here are just a few examples of ways business process automation can be used to streamline tasks and improve customer experience:
- Automate email responses to the “contact us” button on your website, even if it’s just to let customers know someone will be in touch shortly.
- Send automatic appointment reminders to customers.
- Deliver lead inquiries directly to sales when they come in.
- Deliver satisfaction surveys to customers.
Stay connected from anywhere
Small business owners are on the move — running to suppliers, checking on accounts, visiting job sites, and hopefully taking some hard-earned time off. But they need to remain available and connected no matter where they are. applications like Azure, or any other cloud computing service can give you and your staff access no matter where you’re working. Reduce on-premises hardware and all the upkeep! All this while still working securely and efficiently.
Tap into fast, reliable infrastructure
To stay connected from anywhere, you need a network that can handle anything you throw at it. Additional technology means additional requirements. Speed, reliability and security are the keys to a network that lays the foundation for productivity and a healthy work-life balance. To alleviate worries about downtime, find a provider that has an efficient customer support, as well as a good technical experience.
Internet support and remote troubleshooting
The fastest internet speeds won’t matter if you run into a problem and don’t have the support to fix it. Do some research and read reviews to see what level of customer support your provider offers. Make sure you have the support you need when you need it.
Stay secure
Hackers don’t just target large businesses — small businesses are increasingly on the receiving end of phishing, malware, ransomware and other types of cyberattacks. The widespread shift to remote work has also opened new doors for would-be hackers, and breaches have been on the uptick since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Worries around cybersecurity can keep small business owners up at night, but it’s becoming easier to implement security strategies that give comprehensive protection.