Small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) face a unique set of challenges on a daily basis. These businesses must be creative and resourceful with their technology spending in order to continue to grow and flourish despite financial and human resource constraints. Following are a few of the main areas of concern experienced by SMBs.
Keeping Data Intact
Losing data can bring an SMB to its knees and, quite often, out of business altogether. Without a data integrity specialist on staff, it can be quite difficult to manage the complexities of data flow, storage, and security. Failing to have a solid backup process in place makes the situation worse by creating an unnecessary risk of business collapse should a loss occur.
Managing Outages
Downtime is an expensive problem, costing hundreds to thousands of dollars per minute. SMBs are much more vulnerable to such a large financial loss than are bigger companies, especially when faced with prolonged outages. In addition, these smaller organizations typically lack the IT resources usually committed to system administration and maintenance. Those running the business without these critical resources are often unsure of how systems should be built and integrated, so may construct them in a less than stable architecture, leading to frequent downtime.
Antiquated Solutions
A wide variety of robust technologies exist today. Unfortunately, many SMB teams have limited knowledge of these new systems and fail to take advantage of their power, which can limit efficiency and productivity. As smaller companies must do more with less, this is an unfortunate obstacle to growth.
Using the Wrong Tools for Sales
Sales can be particularly challenging for SMBs, as they need both the right pitch and the right clientele. Lacking tools that can provide valuable information may mean that the sales staff is misdirecting its efforts. Modern data analytics can show trends, insights, and results in an extremely timely manner, but SMBs may not be capitalizing on these tools.
Enterprise-Sized Solutions Do Not Fit All
So many useful tools in the marketplace have been constructed to serve the big money forum: enterprises and major corporations. These applications and systems are complex and costly, which makes them out of range for most SMBs. Businesses of all sizes need workflow solutions, and SMBs must scour the landscape for affordable ways to handle everything from sales to HR, purchasing, and compliance.
SMBs have a particular set of needs since they may be limited by available resources. Acquiring affordable and easily managed IT solutions will help these smaller businesses succeed in an increasingly technical world.