Posts

3 IT Shifts for Small Business: Mobile-Social

/in

Shifter
The nature of computing and how it’s used by business is changing – rapidly.  You have heard the buzzwords … mobile, social, cloud, big data, analytics, and others.  You probably have thought about your own business and thought the these changes are just for the enterprise.

Three major shifts in technology, however, can and will impact your organization:  Data; Cloud; and Mobile-Social.

Shift 3: Mobile-Social

Why do we combine Mobile and Social? Social would not exist without Mobile.  Before the mobile revolution, social was limited to “Other who viewed this also viewed …” cues like those on Amazon.com. Social works because it is quick, easy, convenient, and immediate.

And while mobile technology lets us stay connected to the office and provides us access to information, the real transformation with mobile and social technologies is engagement.

Engagement, driven by mobile and social technologies, lets you build trust and establish value. And, if done properly, lets you build trust and value in a secure manner.

Mobile-Social lets you expand the nature of your engagement. You can easily move beyond 1:1 conversations with your customers. The #hashtag and the @mention let you “listen in” on the conversations you customers are having with their friends, and can give you the opportunity to join the conversation.

While there are examples of social media posts going viral and shaming companies into better behavior. The real opportunity lies with this type of communication:

“We saw you post about X. We were not aware of this issue and will fix it quickly. A customer rep will call you shortly to assist you directly.”

And via communications like this:

“Thank you for mentioning your great experience with our service. We are sending you a small token or our appreciation for your business and support.”

Most small business, like yours and ours, could never afford the infrastructure necessary to facilitate, monitor, and act on social media interactions.  Cloud-based services, however, have the horsepower and economy of scale to enable us to leverage social-mobile technologies. And, make it possible to integrate our social-mobile applications with our operational and line of business systems.

 

3 IT Shifts for Small Business: Cloud

/in

Shifter
The nature of computing and how it’s used by business is changing – rapidly.  You have heard the buzzwords … mobile, social, cloud, big data, analytics, and others.  You probably have thought about your own business and thought the these changes are just for the enterprise.

Three major shifts in technology, however, can and will impact your organization:  Data; Cloud; and Mobile-Social.

Shift 2: Cloud

Not everything labeled “cloud” is actually “cloud computing”.  For our purposes, that’s okay.  Whether meeting the strict definition of cloud computing or a hosted service, the cloud is transformational.

Virtualization, one of the underlying mechanisms of building cloud services, is the entry point for most businesses doing it themselves.  Virtualization, however, is only the baseline.

The real power of the cloud is that IT and business processes transform into digital services.

Filing an auto insurance claim, for example, used to be a time-consuming process with paper forms, phone calls, visits to repair shops, and meeting with adjusters.  Today, filing a claim is digital service available to the policy holder by mobile app that instantly puts the information in the hands of the broker, adjuster, and back-office.

Cloud technology has the power to transform business models. Small businesses are less limited by geography than any other time in human history. Scalable, affordable resources empower companies to experiment and development without prohibitive capital investment. The pace of innovation accelerates and time to market drops.

While some small businesses may deliver cloud-based solutions to customers, for your business, the impact on the customer may be indirect. Better relationship management and systems enhance the way we sell. Better support systems scale with our customer base, enable self-help, and improve communications. Even simple abilities, like secure calendar sharing, make it easier for your customers to make appointments to speak with you and your team.

The cloud makes it easier for us to select specific applications and services. And we can integrate these applications and services into a single computing ecosystem without huge investments in middleware, custom programming, and infrastructure.

Where you start with the cloud depends on how you want your business to evolve. We recommend beginning with a platform that enables communications and collaborations, and can serve as the integration point for CRM, ERP, and other applications, as well as line of business systems.

3 IT Shifts for Small Business: Data

/in

Shifter
The nature of computing and how it’s used by business is changing – rapidly.  You have heard the buzzwords … mobile, social, cloud, big data, analytics, and others.  You probably have thought about your own business and thought the these changes are just for the enterprise.

Three major shifts in technology, however, can and will impact your organization:  Data; Cloud; and Mobile/Social.

Shift 1: Data

In every wave of computing since the 1970’s, the evolution has focused on helping organizations make processes faster and cheaper.  Our current wave is about data.

The process for handling an insurance claim has been optimized for over 40 years.  Today, it’s about the data. How does the customer file a claim?  By phone? By filling out an online form? By sending pictures? Is it on the web? Is there an app for that?

The data shift recognizes that data is the new natural resource. The accident report isn’t just about paying a claim, it’s about assessing risk, finding patterns, and measuring outcomes. The focus is on data collection, analysis, and presentation.

If the data is available in a usable format, the processes remain efficient and even improve.

For some small businesses, the data revolution may mean investing in big data and analytic tools.  For others, CRM and ERP systems provide a starting point.  For most, however, the data revolution begins with access to data.  It sounds simple. But …

Can you team find the documents and information they need, easily and quickly?  Do they have access from anywhere they may be working, from any device, at anytime?

Do you route documents as email attachments, or provide access? Do you manage roles – owner, editor, reviewer, etc?

Can your team work together in person or remotely, in real-time or as convenient? Do file systems become a mess of document names and versions? How easy is it for your team to collaborate with vendors or customers?

Traditional, in-house file servers prevent the data shift. Ubiquitous access does not exist, permission settings are complex, and files sit in a separate silo than your communication tools.

Businesses like yours are moving to cloud storage and broader cloud platforms for the data shift. Case in point: Google Apps for Work.

Google Apps for Work provides a platform that gives small businesses the ability to shift to a data-centric way of working.

  • Your team collaborates by working on a single version of the document, in real-time or as convenient. Changes are tracked; revisions are managed.
  • People share documents by sending access links, not attachments. Your staff need not waste time figuring out where they saved the latest version, and if their latest version is the latest version.
  • When looking for information, a search in Gmail can also list relevant Drive and Sites content.
  • Storage is cheap, and optionally unlimited.
  • Conference calls become face-to-face meetings, via Hangouts.  People collaborate, can see how others respond, and can share screens and documents without complex meeting software.

Moving to Google Apps is not a decision about whether or not to stop using MS Office (you can save/edit MS Office files with Drive). Moving to Google Apps is about whether or not you want your business to thrive in a data-driven world.