One push from the right person can motivate you to take on the biggest challenges. Technology is that push that gives and allows every budding business the opportunity to grow and reach heights.

Let us explore the various opportunities that technological advances have provided to the budding business.

Impact of Technology on startups

Startups depend on technology to help them operate on a day-to-day basis. From laptop computers with Internet capabilities to printers, online file storage, and Web-based applications, technology impacts small and budding businesses across several industries. Technology can affect small businesses in encouraging and hostile ways, depending on the goals a business has, the products they chose to use, and how well entrepreneurs and their employees adjust to new systems.

Share and Collaborate

Small and budding businesses work very closely with their clients to offer them products and services that add value to their lifestyles. E-mail and instant messenger tools have cemented the path for online sharing and collaboration. With the power to instantly connect, share information and gain feedback, e-mail and instant messengers are useful technological advantages for small businesses.

Web-Based project management

Web-based project management programs such as Jira, Basecamp, and Zoho Projects offer to track projects, organizing tasks, updating team members and clients, tracking time, and sharing documents instantly. This means the latest information available in a central hub, irrespective of a person's location.

Flexible Work Environments

Technology gives startup owners and their employees the advantages to work in the office, from home, on the road, and even from across the country. Offering small business owners, the privilege to hire aptitude from all over the world. Technology further allows gaining a competitive edge in the global markets.

Instant Connection with Customers

Technology gives startups the power to connect with their customers via e-mail, blogs, social networks, and forums. Thereby, owners get the advantage of instant connection by getting real-time feedback from customers and apply it to their businesses immediately if seen applicable.

Online Stores

Technology allows crafters, clothing and accessories designers, and painters an opportunity to set up online stores, rather than investing in costly stores. With consumers hunting the Internet to find everything from gifts to ordering groceries, the popularity of online shopping has been increasing by the hour. Although, businesses with offline stores can create online stores to increase their visibility and reach target markets beyond just their neighborhoods and bordering communities.

Employee Training

As small businesses apply new technologies into their processes, they are also expected to provide training to new and veteran employees. While new employees tend to have the capability to adapt to the technologies easily than compared to veteran employees. Platforms like slack, Microsoft teams, skype, google meets etc will further help in holding online meetings and taking updates on the made progress, ensuring that the employees are well aware of the communication processes. 

AI an advantage to small businesses

The objective of AI is to automate tasks that take a lot of time if done by one person.

Customer recommendations

Industry giants like Amazon and Netflix use Artificial Intelligence to offer their customers suggestions based on what others have purchased or what people who like a specific genre of shows watched next.

Many small businesses, especially those who are niche industry players such as travel companies, offer their customers recommendations about something based on specific details of their trip or predictions about their plans by machine learning (ML).

Observing and analyzing data

Data analysis is a task highly prone to human error. For the Reason That acquiring, filtering, sorting, and analyzing data consumes a lot of time for a human data analyst. The Machine Learning algorithms fueled by artificial intelligence can help automate the painstaking task of data analysis.

Even though small businesses have lesser contacts than large companies, a growing business of 150 people might only have two-three data analysts who have to contend with over 500 customers’ information which includes things like account history, demographics, restrictions, etc. To simplify this process, machine learning software can be used to take the stress off the data analysts.

Conclusion

Technology has helped in advancing every industry and played a very significant role and making or breaking the brand name. Small business gets to make the most of it as they get the global exposure by just sitting in their office cabin or home and get clients and make a mark for themselves without even going forward for an offline storefront.