At the beginning of their existence, small businesses need not only to represent themselves on the market but also to provide high-quality customer service and work out the internal infrastructure to stay afloat and not give in to more famous names. The first years of the existence of small businesses are the most decisive and determine their future. According to statistics from Shopify, 50% of small businesses don’t survive the first five years
To successfully overcome all obstacles in the highly competitive modern business, small companies turn to IT technologies, which provide them with a considerable number of benefits, and we’ll highlight them in our new article.
IT Support Strategies for Small Business Enterprises
IT's Role in Automating Small Business Workflows
Enhancing Support in Small Businesses through Technology
Improving Team Dynamics within Small Businesses
No less important for small companies is the setting of communication within the enterprise itself. With tools like JIRA, collaborators can easily create, assign, and delegate new tasks.
As for JIRA, it allows you to use a Kanban board, which allows you to visualize the entire work process within the company and show who created a certain task, to whom this task was assigned, and whether this task was completed. A user in the JIRA account clicks on the “Create” button and selects the project, the type of task, a brief description (with the possibility to add an image), priority, and the name of the employee to whom this task is assigned.
The Kanban board is divided into three categories: “To Do”, “In Progress”, and “Done”. The user sees in front of them the number of tasks that are assigned and in progress and can independently drag a task from one column to another.
How IT Empowers Small Business Success
- Improving data security. The latest technologies allow you to translate important data into digital solutions that have reliable data protection algorithms, and at the same time provide the user with options for easy scaling and migration of this data. Data protection is especially relevant for medical and financial institutions.
- Saving time. For small enterprises, reducing the time required to complete deliveries is a priority to ensure the quality performance of their main tasks. And the IT tools mentioned above even allow you to increase income from your activities. For example, 33% of small businesses claimed they saved more than 40 minutes of their work time per week by using tools to automate tasks and/or artificial intelligence.
- Scalability. IT tools thus can adapt to company sizes and workloads, with further prospects for business development and growth. A clear example of such solutions is cloud computing services by AWS.
- Increasing company productivity. Due to access to the latest technologies that simplify and speed up routine work processes, the companies’ productivity increases as well. So, according to WritersBlockLive statistics, the use of collaborative tools increased by 131% .
- Simplifying data management. It is especially important for small companies that are just starting their business path to clarify their audience, and their preferences, and think through a strategy for promoting their product. In this case, companies will find a variety of tools to simplify data management.
EZ-Estimate: Your Gateway to Seamless IT Support for Small Ventures
Our company also contributed to the development of web solutions that automate businesses. EZ-Estimate, a SaaS platform for those working in real estate and architecture sales is the case. This web solution was commissioned by a US client we found through the Upwork platform. The client came to us through Upwork with an idea and rough sketches of how they envisioned their system. The client wanted to create a user-friendly online platform that allowed construction companies to create user-friendly sites to attract their audience.
Our team was in charge of the entire development process for this project:
- Writing technical documentation
- Design development
- Project and database architecture
- Stage and live environment deployment
- Frontend development
- Backend development
- Connecting third-party APIs (Google Maps, Stripe)
- Project testing (QA & Unit testing)
The most modern technologies were chosen, which could easily be adapted to the expansion of the project so that we did not rely on any technical limitations. Since we had specific requirements for the client, e.g. it should be a SaaS platform, and technologies were selected that would allow us to do this. We concluded that the latest versions of Laravel and VueJs at that time would be suitable for us. Our technical director and programmers made this decision.
The project was managed with Kanban. The working method we used is Agile, and we constantly listened to changes from the client.
As a result, we have created a SaaS platform for construction companies and land owners who must create landing sites to attract new audiences. The system calculates the cost of work on a specific site. We receive SQFT or LF and calculate how much time and cost will take, for example, to improve a parking lot. The user registers their account on the platform, on which they create their page, and then links this page to their official website. The customization level for this product is extremely high, because a user sets the price, adds different products and options, and upgrades these products. After that, a user creates a landing page to discuss their company. But a user can also leave only the calculator. People go to this calculator, fill in their questionnaires, and contact details, and choose the products of this company that bought a subscription and filled them. A customer chooses these products, goes through several steps, and marks on the map where they want to place, for example, a garden for the home, showing it on Google Maps. Its length and size are calculated and the total cost of the work is determined. After that, the company contacts the customers, or the customers contact the company, and the service is provided.
Today, small businesses are increasingly using IT for several reasons. First of all, these technologies make it possible to survive the first years of small companies’ activity due to task automation and saving time. Thanks to IT tools, small companies can more easily and simply collect the necessary customer data and coordinate internal activities between employees.
Using IT solutions to support business is a step into a future where investing in the right technology can be the key to long-term success for small businesses, enabling them to compete on a level with bigger market players.
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