We can no longer imagine a life without high speed internet or high speed transportation or mobile communication devices, can we? Technological advancement has made our day to day life much easier. The advancement in medicine, telecommunications, transportation and more has impacted our lives in more ways than we can imagine.

Most of these advancements happened so fast, in fact in the last couple of decades. Even though the consumers caught up with its pace, same can hardly be said about many of our Indian Businesses; more so when we look at the small and medium businesses. So, why should small and medium businesses (SMBs) spent time and money adapting technology when they are already working fine? Let us take a look, shall we?

Internet-abled

No, I am not talking about having a broadband connection in your office. Yes you should have one, but it has to be beyond that. India is changing fast and this change is happening now. SMBs in the country should not fail to seize this moment. The first thing people do in today’s world when they need a service or product is, they Google. So, to have your own website will definitely have a considerable impact on your business in the long run. Say you are a plastic and cardboard package manufacturer and you have your own website where you have given images of all the different types of package solutions that you offer along with their prices and minimum number of order.

A person, a new entrepreneur may be, who wants to send a reasonable number of products via courier and needs customized package can go to your website and contact you about that. Also, in today’s world, having a website transpires to the company’s credibility. Now this is just one of many ways in which a website can help your small company to aggressively expand and become a major player. Now, this does not need a huge investment. A couple of grant and you will have a good website with enough server space.

Being Mobile

Now, if your small and medium business depends on rather few employees who make their long and short road trips, then you definitely need to think about taking your business mobile. All too often, time spent on the road is time lost. Instead of spending time travelling, you can use the time to get work done with technology. A networked phone solution that offers video calls and Web conferencing can help reduce the time and expense of travelling to offsite meetings and training sessions.

To stay productive on the move, your employees need to be able to reach the people and information they need—anywhere, anytime. With tools like virtual private networks (VPNs), your employees can work outside the office and still enjoy safe access to the business network. With a few mobile devices, 3G connection, right software and applications you can take your company mobile and let your employees do their jobs while they are travelling.

This is the world of smartphones where there are apps for anything and everything, and they are not very expensive as well. Once you are online, you can start thinking about the advantages of going mobile. You can also enable employees to take their phone systems wherever they go. Missed calls create project delays, wasted opportunities, and lost revenues. With a networked voice and data solution, your employees can have one phone number that rings simultaneously on multiple devices, so customers reach the right person the first time. Your staff can access all their communications from anywhere, checking for e-mail, voicemail, and faxes from just one inbox. Technology based SMBs are a plenty in the market and many of these cater specifically to other SMBs, they will help you to do this and it will not cost you a fortune. Also if you have a little bit more money to shed on this many of these companies can actually make you tailored solutions that fits your specific need perfectly.

Automation

Once you go through the first two stages and become a technologically mature organization you can start thinking about adapting technologies to other aspects of your business, or rather automating your business. At this stage you should be ready to spend a handsome amount on technological adaptation. Starting from data storage to disaster recovery to employee management to product designing and development, everything can be made easier and more effective via adapting technology. A survey from business communications software, systems and services provider Avaya done in 2008 on SMBs in UK show that a fifth of these businesses lose £25,000 or more a year through employee absenteeism and approximately one-third put the figure somewhere between £10-25,000. This scenario throws light in to importance of automation. For example, nurse rostering is a major challenge for most of the big hospitals. A head nurse or whoever is in charge of rostering will be spending hours doing this and if a nurse fails to turn up where she was supposed to, this information will take time to get to the person in charge.

Once it does, they will have to spend much time in redeploying. But if a complete workforce management solution like that of Kronos’ is adapted then the entire rostering process can be brought down to a few minutes. Like this adapting technology at various levels and automating where ever needed you can cut down mundane tasks and in long term save a lot of money.