Small business owners have a lot of figure out, with not a lot of guidance. If you are lucky, you get a mentor who guides you throughout, rest rely on the internet and the trial and errors of their own decisions. Making big purchases often overwhelms small businesses, it makes sense. The dread of what would happen if the plan fails, what if something urgent crops up and we need the funds; the doubts of whether they are big enough to start investing in professional tools, whether it makes sense to spend more than to have a big safety net; plague the minds of small business owners.
One of those decisions is usually regarding tech purchases. Many shy away from it, it seems more serious when you pay for tools to help you. It’s more psychological than anything else. Many researches have shown that only a small percentage of small businesses actually consider buying tech as an essential investment for their success. Others go about things the conservative way, which more often than not ends up costing more than the initial tech investment.
The companies that have taken the leap and adopted the tech tend to grow faster. Nowadays, digital marketing is the number one tool that can be used for a blossoming business to quickly create a foothold in the market. The businesses that have understood this get to see the results, they generate more revenue than the ones that haven’t yet taken the plunge.
Using technology smartly can help you run your operations more efficiently. You will get more return from each employee as well. When something that takes hours manually could be done in minutes by the purchase of one tool, the employees will have more time to do the important work. More time would mean you are able to take on more clients.
Like I said before, small business owners instinctively want to cut costs. But with tech investment, short-term savings can turn out to be more expensive in the long run. Technology can help you understand and handle the details of your business that you might have missed otherwise.
Suppose you run a restaurant, you do everything yourself. You look after the staff, train them, explain to them what to do. You take stock of the inventory, you make purchases, you manage finances, you track down the profit areas and tackle the loss areas. How long do you think you can go before you slip in one or the other task. Is this really the most efficient way?
Say you invest in an inventory management system. It keeps track of all that you have, all the ingredients that are dwindling and you might need to buy soon, what ingredients are used faster than others, alternatives to things you get, the prices of things, etc. How much time do you think it will save you every time you have to make an order, take a decision, check the stock? A lot, right? That time can be saved in actually running the businesses, training the staff, working on feedback, and working on business expansion.
It might be tempting to save costs now, but you always have to take into account the pros and cons of every decision in regards to the long run.
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