Technology is part of small and mid-sized businesses and continues to increase in importance. As companies seek to utilize technology in whatever way they can to improve operations and get ahead of competitors, it’s necessary for SMB’s to not fall behind.
What technologies should SMBs consider adopting this year?
1. Marketing Using Automation
Marketing a business through email works well, but what is marketing automation?
The idea is to create a workflow with visitors that sign up to an email list. Collecting information about what they’re interested in and by understanding where they are in the flow, different responses can be set up to go out to them.
For instance, if they’ve got a birthday coming up, then a special discount coupon can be automatically provided through a surprise email. Depending on what action they take while visiting the site, this can trigger other responses too. The idea is to make email marketing more relevant, rather than sending an identical email to everyone, which is far more hit and miss.
2. Video Marketing
One area of marketing that is growing from strength to strength is video marketing. Our own article about virtual reality with video is a case in point. However, there are also 360-degree video cameras that use multiple lenses and software to bring the entire image together into a seamless video shot. Using controls on the video, the viewer can move their point-of-view anywhere in the fluid live shot, which is truly amazing the first time you see it.
For companies looking to showcase their products, viewers can look at the product from every angle using 360-degree immersion technology. And it’s real not virtual because video images are stitched together to create a complete visual experience. If they’re looking at a Blu-ray player, they can see the front, the sides and the back with the additional ports. Similarly, being able to see all sides of the laptop is useful to observe how many USB and other ports it has and whether they’re located.
3. Chatbots
Chatbots are being used by companies now to engage with customers before they get in touch with a member of their staff. According to Gartner, a research firm, within a year or two over 80% of touchpoints with customers will (initially) be through virtual AI chat systems. While this might sound surprising, as people become more accustomed to systems like Siri, Alexa, and others, chatbots become more widely accepted. They can be used on instant messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or even within Live Chat systems on the website as the first point of contact too.
If you think of this technology as little like more advanced telephone system where you can speak into the phone what department you’re looking for, then you get the idea. A chatbot-based system can ask relevant questions and be programmed to interpret the answer correctly. Multiple choice answers let the bot understand what’s required of inquiries that haven’t come through a phone call.
For companies, these bots which have fairly advanced capabilities can continue conversations or ask questions and process answers to cut down the workload for a customer services team. When managed well, they can correctly direct inquiries to the appropriate department or individual too.
4. Cloud Integration, Business Analytics, and Big Data
The use of the cloud began with storage but has now extended fully into supporting web apps and mobile apps that connect to it and link up with databases to receive information. Using the cloud makes it possible to reduce the size of mobile app initial installs because databases don’t need to be stored locally.
Companies will expand into mixing cloud technology with business analytics to better understand app usage patterns and customer behavior. This goes beyond website analytics to broaden the insights and innovations that can come from a deep dive into big data.
5. Automated Tasks Leads to Deep Work
As AI comes into play and is able to understand and repeat digital tasks without a hitch, the need for workers to perform repetitive tasks will gradually decline. Using different automated solutions where one change can trigger an automatic response, customers responses can be handled automatically on mundane matters.
For employees, this allows them to get involved with “deep work” to focus on important tasks that are better suited to humans than artificial intelligence. When groups of workers can focus in this manner, interruptions to their workflow lessen which improves the quality of their output. Able to move away from boring, repetitive tasks, knowledge workers can make a meaningful contribution which leads to higher job satisfaction too.
Technology is having a modifying effect on companies and how they operate. For instance, some are abandoning the idea of a head office in favor of co-working spaces where employees can work from many cities across the country. The added flexibility also allows employees not to fear the increasing use of AI in business operations.