Three Tech Trends Influencing the Future of Small Businesses

When it comes to adopting technology and using its advantages, the business sector is among the first. Small business owners are even quicker in adopting new technologies and trying them because history indicates that businesses that embraced new technologies grew faster than others did. At present, we see new technologies emerging every day and confusing us with their benefits. They range from mobility to social media concept, BYOD, cloud computing, data management and they all promise to help business owners in expanding their business. In this write up, we will study about three most influential trends that are reshaping the composition of small business owners and will continue to do so in future.

Continuously soaring mobile adoption – A study conducted by SMB – a firm responsible for tracking technology adoption by small and medium sized businesses shows that adopting of enterprise mobility is on its peak. It says that the number of small and medium sized business owners that adopted mobility has almost doubled from 18 percent to 35 percent in last one year. The number of employees using mobile apps for professional use is growing in proportion with the growing number of companies switching to enterprise mobility. Business owners have started investing more capital towards mobile adoption as the study says that on average, a small business owner spends about 11 to 20 percent of its technology budget on mobile presence. Two-third business owners say that they will invest more towards vital areas like devices, applications, security and consulting services of mobility culture next year.

However, most business owners questioned in the survey were seen concerned about the types of smart phones gaining access to the office and its server with the advent of BYOD culture. This culture allows employees to use their personal smart devices and mobile apps for professional purposes. From one perspective, it is beneficial for business owners and on the other hand, it has its share of disadvantages as well. Entrepreneurs getting grinded between the turmoil of whether to adopt mobility or not must understand that by mere adoption, they can't really make it work and spell magic automatically. They have to devise a clever strategy before its implementation and thus, allow it to put its paramount influence.

Socializing getting more serious – The number of small and medium businesses using social media channels for various purposes is on a swift rise. Last year, only 50 percent respondents said "yes" to social media, whereas this figure reached 58 percent this year. However, it was observed that only 25 percent small business owners are aware of the strategic use of social media to chase specific goals, while 75 percent entrepreneurs simply take a non-professional and ad hoc approach without any specific goal to achieve through social media campaign. 

Cloud computing continues to growl over the business sector – Cloud computing refers to use of web based instead of PC based software applications and it promises to get better every year. Slowly, it is on its way to become a "new normal" for small business owners, as cloud computing vendors have started providing cloud-based software for almost every activity occurring in a business. Cloud based software continues to grow further and business owners have started using them for various purposes like accounting, expense tracking, data back-up, storage time tracking, project management, document signing and many others. The concept of cloud computing has shown a promising prospective for business owners by cutting down the cost significantly. Secondly, it can be deployed quickly to give access to multiple computing related controls that were once, just for the use of bigger business owners.