by Ferdi Roberts
When you have a small business, it’s easy to think small about technology, and fail to look ahead to that day when your business outgrows the tech tools you have in place. It’s easy to assume that to deliver outstanding cutting-edge service requires technology that is only available to large companies with deep pockets. You can forget about large revenue growth, because you lack the manpower and resources needed to deliver the numbers. You’re condemning your business to being small, because you’re thinking small.
Let me explain…
When you start your business, you look at technology in terms of using it yourself, or maybe sharing access to it with the few employees or partners in your business. You install bookkeeping software on one PC for managing your business finances. You use spreadsheets to track project status, and everyone at the company uses their cell phone as their business phone. You get the picture.
Because you and your team are talented, and ambitious, your business begins to grow. You hire more employees, add more clients, and the future looks bright and promising. Until your business outgrows the IT tools you are using to manage it. Suddenly, your financial management software cannot cope with the scale of your growth, and your entries and management fall behind, because you are so busy working on growing the business, you can’t manage its operations. You cannot grow without facing a shift over to technology solutions that can scale to manage your growth, and that transition promises to be painful – if your business can survive it.
It doesn’t have to be that way!
A few years ago, scalable, sophisticated business technology used to require large company resources and IT departments were limited to large companies. Today the IT features and advantages once limited to large corporations are now available for small businesses – and you only need to pay for what you need.
How? Software as a Service (SaaS) applications now offer the features of big company technology, but at the low cost you can afford.
Need to manage your finances? Don’t buy a small business finance software license and install it on a single machine you share with your bookkeeper. Instead, use one of several SaaS business finance applications that provide advanced bookkeeping features, the ability to grow with your business, and even allow you to access the app from a smart phone when you’re on the go.
Today, you can deliver world class customer service or ‘Goliath-beating’ sales revenues with software that is available ‘on-demand’. As long as you feel that your business is ‘too small’ for technology, you will remain small. Embracing SaaS-based technology will allow your business to scale, grow, and thrive.
I will make a bet with you now. If you embrace it – success will follow.
