Opening a new business is a big challenge. There is a huge list of things that you need to do right to make a success of your venture. So, you must do all that you can to make things as easy as possible for yourself.
One of the things you can easily do is to invest in some technology to make things easier for yourself. Below we give you a taste of just how helpful the right tech can be when it is deployed properly in your start-up.
Accounting software
Top of the list is accounting apps or software. According to the US Bank, 82% of businesses fail because of poor cash management. So, your finances are something you need to keep on top of from the very start.
Founding your business is going to cost money. Before you do anything, get an accounting app, put it on your phone, and keep track of what you spend from day one. Make sure it is one that you can continue to use as your business grows. For example, you will need to issue invoices and pay staff. This article will help you to choose something suitable.
Keep your accounts up to date. Ideally, you want to do them every single day. That way, at any point, you can pull off a cash flow report. Plus, from the first customer, you will be able to tell if what you are charging is enabling you to make a profit rather than a loss.
Infographic created by NanonetsTechnology that makes it easy for your customers to pay
Getting paid quickly will help to keep the cash flowing, which is vital. So, you need to make it as easy as possible for your customers to pay you. Giving them several payment options makes it more likely they will pay fast. You can read about the different kinds of Point of Sale (POS) hardware and software by clicking here.
Tools that help you with marketing and analysis
To be able to thrive, every business needs to market itself effectively. How you do this, depends in part on what you sell and how you sell it. For example, a retail store, café, gym, or garage will be able to benefit from learning how to use all of their digital signage features. They have people visiting their business premises every day. So, being able to create and deploy tailored ads and use the built-in software to see which ones resulted in the most sales will be highly beneficial. But a service provider who goes to someone´s home would have no use for that technology.
However, both businesses could benefit from using social media management software to create, publish and manage the effectiveness of each post. You can learn how to choose that type of software here. Monitoring the effectiveness of every ad or post quickly teaches a start-up what their customers like and want.
Technology that improves customer service
Studies show that when customers have issues, they want solutions fast. In many cases, using an AI chatbot will speed up the rate at which you can direct a customer to the right answer. Over the past few years, they have become far more effective, and people are reaching the point where they prefer to use a bot during the initial stages of their inquiry. This article explains why that is the case and tells you more about how a small business can deploy them and benefit from doing so.
How to work out what technology will benefit your business the most
The above is just an overview list to demonstrate the potential and get you thinking. If you are interested in investing in more technology for your start-up, try this approach to work out what kinds you should be considering:
1. Make a list of all of the regular tasks you and your staff need to do
2. Identify the ones that are going to take you the longest to achieve
3. List out those tasks that cost the most for you to get done
4. Pick three items from each list and investigate how technology can help you with those particular tasks
The last step is to make sure that what you buy is going to provide a good ROI. Make a note of how much it will cost you to use that technology each month. Work out how much using it will save you. If it looks like you will save money overall, give using that particular technology a try.
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