Published on May 28th, 2019 | by Guest

7 Tech Tools that Will Help Bring Digital Transformation to Your SMB

One of the biggest problems all small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) are facing, especially in the beginning, where there aren’t enough funds or resources to go around for all activities of the company. For instance, if your small business is investing in the quality of its products, you will have less money to spend on marketing or hiring new people. And seeing as most small businesses experience problems with cash flow at some point, you need to be savvy with your money and cut down on the costs everywhere you can, at least for a period of time.

This is where digital transformation comes in, which includes digital technology tools, businesses, processes, and channels which can help make your business more productive and successful. It can include anything from marketing automation, using cloud storage, or simply any kind of software of platform which can help things run more smoothly, while keeping the costs in check. With that in mind, let’s take a look at seven tech tools that will help bring digital transformation to your small businesses.

1. Stripe

Making sure that everything is running smoothly on the financial side of things, especially when it comes to accepting payments from your customers and clients. For that very reason, you need to check out Stripe, which enables your small business to process payments effortlessly, which is extremely important in industries and niches which earn most of their revenue during just a few months out of the year, such as summer or ski resorts. You get all the banking infrastructure you need, plus fraud prevention, allowing you to provide a trustworthy service.

This tool can be especially useful for places such as custom essay writing service websites or online stores, which rely on the trust built between them and their customers. Apart from that, maintaining a steady cash flow is important for all small businesses, and with Stripe, that is non-issue. You will never have trouble managing your receivables.

2. TensorFlow

Machine learning is shaping up to be a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes, and one of the best examples of that is TensorFlow. TensorFlow, developed by researchers at Google, is an open-source machine learning framework which can help businesses shoulder some of the burden. For example, it can help customer support automate some of their queries while they focus on other tasks, or deal with more complex queries. It frees up time and resources, since it can handle some of the most repetitive and manual tasks, which allows your staff to work on something more important.

3. Chatbots

Machine learning and AI are slowly permeating every pore of our lives, and business field is no exception. Small and medium-sized businesses can benefit a lot from this new technology, and especially from using chatbots. Chatbots are an ideal solution for companies which would like to improve or expand their customer support, but which don’t yet have the resources to hire additional staff. In fact, chatbots can be used to provide 24/7 support. Of course, they are not on the same level as humans, but they can talk to customers and answer basic questions. While building a chatbot will cost you money, the expenses are still lower than hiring additional employees.

According to Essay Have manager, Jim Meier, although they have a live chat feature on their website, they plan to build their very own chatbot, which will not only help them save money when it comes to staff, but which will also enable them to be there for their customers 24/7. Students will be able to get immediate answers to the most relevant questions, regardless of their location and time zone, without the company needing to hire additional staff to handle these inquiries.

4. Slack

Communication and being on the same page when it comes to projects both large and small is key, and one of the best tools for the job is Slack. Slack allows your team to communicate with ease, exchange project information and files, manage the projects, and streamline your business processes. It is being used by over 9 million users, and it is even used by large corporations, such as Airbnb. But the good news is that you can use it for free for an unlimited period of time, whether you are the best dissertation writing service out there or an individual.

Another great thing about Slack is the integration of Google Drive and Google Docs. If your team is located all across the globe, the aforementioned tools are essential, not just because they are free, but because they eliminate the issue of document compatibility. With Slack, however, all of that is taken to another level, because it’s so easy to actually share Google Docs and Google Drive files with your team members.

5. Trello

While Slack is geared more towards instant communication and file exchange, Trello is a SaaS product which allows your SMB to manage multiple projects, and increase cohesion inside a particular group that is working on a project, or among different teams in your company. It allows you to create lists, preferences, and collaboration points, which help you envision the entire process, instead of just going through the logs. Trello enables you to never lose track of the big picture, no matter how complex your projects get.

6. Zipbooks

Accounting is probably the least glamorous aspects of running a small or medium-sized business. Large companies find it equally tedious, which explains how companies like Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers got so huge and successful. Now, since you can’t afford to hire those companies to do your accounting, you have to rely on a more affordable solution, and of the bunch, ZIpbooks is the best choice. In addition to accounting, Zipbooks also enables you to send and receive invoices, as well as to do billing and expenses. While invoicing is free as part of the basic package, in order to access additional features, you will have to choose one of Zipbooks’ four packages.

7. Google Drive

While there are plenty of cloud storage options out there, such as Dropbox or even Mega, Google Drive is still the most suitable option from SMBs, just because it’s so simple and effective. You get access to all of its features for free, and in case your budget is zero, it is more than capable of picking up the slack when it comes to file exchange and collaboration. In other words, it can also serve as a substitute for some of the tools on this list. You can also use it to back up your most important data.

Conclusion

Running your own SMB does requires a lot of time, effort, and resources, but you can save on all three using the tools and technologies we have described in this list. They will help you save money, especially in the beginning when you are trying to make your company more stable, and when additional costs, such as staff salaries and expensive software can easily put a dent in your already strained budget. Start implementing them today and grow your business, even if you don’t have a lot of cash to burn. Good luck!

Author Bio:

Becky Holton is a journalist and a blogger at best UK essay writing service. She is interested in education technologies and is always ready to support informative speaking at paper writing service. Follow her on Twitter.

Tags: essay, SMB, software, team collaboration