27 effective ways to use technology for small and medium businesses
At JET IT Services we are strong believers in Technology to help your small and medium business operating in China (or globally).
But,
How can you improve your small/medium business with technology?
Technology can enable:
1. Small and medium businesses (SMBs) to use capital in more effective ways.
2. SMBs can get better efficiency and flexibility
3. SMBs can compete with bigger business without spending big budgets.
To help small and medium business owners, we have prepared a list of benefits to explore technology implementation in their businesses. All the benefits can be achieved freely or with some small efforts.
Give it a try and let us know how they helped your small and medium business!
Are you missing important phone calls?
Look for VoIP.
Your phone vendor can provide you and your team with virtual phone numbers and you will not be limited by a physical line any longer.
This will help you to be available no matter where you are at any time you want.
How to?
Ask your ISP vendor for their available solutions. Reach out to Microsoft for their Teams solution.
How to connect to your computer from anywhere?
Use remote desktop applications to access the files on your computer.
This will help you to keep your documents on your computer (or server, or NAS) if that’s your preference.
But, always use a strong corporate VPN and set up an MFA – multi-factor authentication. Better safe than sorry.
If possible, go paperless to save money, occupy less space, and help the environment.
Benefits:
1. Access your main computer from anywhere.
2. Separate documents on different tools as per your preference.
3. Very good, if you’re a professional using one main device and want to access it with other devices while travelling.
How to?
Setup a remote desktop application based on your budget and needs. An easy one is TeamViewer.
How can you break free of phone lines?
Virtual phone numbers.
Benefits:
1. No dedicated hardware.
2. Toll free virtual numbers.
3. No dedicated hardware.
4. Productivity On The Move
5. Never Miss a Call Again
For example, you can redirect your calls to desk, mobile or a tablet.
How to?
If you’re based in China or have an office in China, you can reach out to China Telecom Global , China Unicom or China Mobile International Limited.
Also, Microsoft is working hard at it with Teams (Microsoft Teams )
You cannot find those important files right now?
Synchronize your smartphone to the cloud to stay connected wherever you go.
By doing this, you’ll be able to find any file you need when you need it on the devices you want.
How to?
Use tools like Microsoft 365 to synchronize your documents and have access to them on multiple devices.
How do you spend your time?
Use time tracking software to understand how time is spent. There are online applications and office devices. It can help to improve accountability, productivity, and processes. Take some time to think before implementing an out of the box solution.
At JET IT Services we use Microsoft 365 and every morning I receive an email from Cortana telling me about my emails and things to do.
My phone gives me screen time reports and tells me where I’m spending (or wasting) time.
And, it reminds me I’m not spending enough time to learn Chinese…
Benefits:
1. Have raw numbers about your time usage
2. Measure your time “expenses”
3. Analyse and work on it!
3.5 Have no more excuses about time.
Are you slow at typing or do you want to type faster? Go with digital dictation!
Benefits:
1. Efficiency
2. Flexibility
3. Managing workloads
4. Costs
If you’re a CPA, law firm or healthcare firm, check these two articles (https://expd8.com/what-are-the-advantages-of-digital-dictation/ https://martelelectronics.com/blog/how-digital-dictation-recorders-work-how-digital-transcribers-work/) with some links to know more!
How are you planning your activities and tasks?
Use project management and task management tools to have an overview of your daily business tasks and long term plans.
Benefits:
1. Improved planning and scheduling.
2. Better collaboration.
3. Effective task delegation.
4. Easier file access and sharing.
5. Easier integration of new members.
6. Effective risk mitigation.
7. Budget management.
8. Remote working.
Here is a list of software you can choose from: Basecamp , Trello , Atlassian Jira , Asana , monday.com , etc.
Choose the one that fits your budget, size of your business and team, how many features you require and which of those features you most value.
Do you have a digital filing system?
Set up a digital filing system or archive to organize, save, share, and find documents.
The easiest solution is to go with Microsoft 365 and setup #Sharepoint.
How to?
Go to the Microsoft page of your country and purchase the solution that fits your needs.
If you’re based in China or have offices in China, reach out to me and we will help you at JET IT Services – Managed IT Services Provider in China.
Benefits:
1. Better organization
2. Easy to find files
3. Easy to sort files
4. Easy to save files
5. Easy to share files
How can you organize your emails? (tip 1)
Use a strong email management provider to organize your emails based on your needs (i.e. projects, customers, employees, functions, etc.).
At JET IT Services we use Microsoft 365 and we can coordinate among users and coordinate our work easily.
A strong email provider will help you against phishing emails. My spam email folder is filled with phishing emails.
For more phishing tips, you can read my dedicated phishing prevention article in the comments.
Benefits:
1. Organize your work.
2. Coordinate for projects, customers, employees, functions, newsletters, industries, etc.
3. Simplify the process and create habits
Are you spending too much without knowing where?
Use online budget tracking to manage and / or reduce your expenses.
Online budget tracking can help you to have an overview of your expenditures on an immediate basis.
In China, you can have Alipay or WeChat Pay give you immediate reports on your expenses / revenues.
In the comments, you can find articles from Scoro, U.S. News & World Report , and others.
They will help your business save money and plan properly moving forward in 2021!
Benefits:
1. Control expenses
2. Control budgets for sales and marketing
Are you taking too much time sharing info with your accountant?
Go digital!
Share the necessary files with your accountant or create shared folders. Reach out to him / her / your outsourced accountant agency before setting up such a system. Follow the requirements of the country where you operate.
Benefits:
1. Save time!
2. Have a quick review of documents shared
Issues:
1. Trust?
2. Safe setup
Are you spending too much on your financial software? Consider open-source applications that fit your budget & replace some expensive name-brand alternatives.
Use the list in the comments to find alternatives to ERPs, Content management systems, emails, Project management, and others.
They will help your business save money until you can use a more standard name-brand solution.
Open source solutions.
Pros:
Cheap or free.
Cons:
Not easy to setup.
Name-brand solutions
Pros:
Easy to setup and maintain
Easy to find experts
Cons:
Not cheap.
Marketing
How to build your online presence?
Create a website, LinkedIn / LinkedIn China 领英中国 profile, and other social media based on your potential audience.
In China, you need to have a WeChat account or consider a #DouYin (the counterpart of TikTok).
This will help your business to promote your presence to your prospects where they spend their time.
They are all very good points, but make sure to reach out to professionals! Or at least, follow them!
Below my list of professionals I follow:
One of my favorites for marketing insights in China is Michael Norris.
For global SEO I recommend Lasse, Fery, and Joonas. Neil Patel goes without saying.
If you’re in global marketing and want to see how to grow an EV brand to the next level, check Hugo Pereira.
I usually recommend Jeff Tan for anything related to the power of words.
And if you want a “metaphorical” slap in the face to go and sell more and how to, check The UK’s Most Hated Sales Trainer® and Mark A. Smith. You can thank me later!
Enough shoutouts. Just check them out!
What can you do with your business and company content?
Start a blog related to your business and target audience. Then share it on other social media using automation tools (it has pros and cons).
At JET IT Services – Managed IT Services Provider in China, we are sharing IT content mostly focused on tech support in China or to improve cybersecurity or how to benefit from Microsoft and Microsoft 365 solutions & tools.
You can do the same for your own business and then share it on social media tools.
Benefits:
1. Create useful content to share with current and prospective customers
2. Become the go-to person in your field
3. Keep updating and learning new topics
Issues:
1. Time management
2. Too much automation?
How to keep in touch with customers or prospects?
Email!
But with a big caveat: ask for permission!
If they’ve agreed with opt-in form, then you can send weekly or monthly updates.
WARNING: Don’t send hundreds of emails at the same time, otherwise the strong email providers will tag you as a spammer.
Use the previous tips to collect marketing material and then share via emails to reach out.
Mailchimp is the easiest solution to manage your email newsletter.
In the comments, you can find some examples of companies doing good email marketing.
Benefits:
1. Customers have approved and will read the emails
2. You can benefit from automation
Issues:
1. Time management
2. Keep connection at a certain level?
Don’t know how to promote your services?
Create podcasts (video or audio), webinars and use web conferences to update your employees and stakeholders and customers without tricky travel.
Benefits:
1. Create interesting content materials
2. Knowledge that can be easily shared
3. Improve public speaking (there has to be a #Toastmasters post for this)
4. Create engaging content
5. Build an online presence with various people
How to?
You can create your podcast or refer to experts or get interviewed.
If you’re operating in China, get in touch with Leonardo Marra （李有）, or Francis Kremer.
If you’re operating in IT, you can check MSP Unplugged.
If you’re operating in the UK, reach out to Mike Winnet! You’ll thank me later!
You don’t know how to reach to your far away customers?
Consider selling your products online or delivering your services online.
For example, use TeamViewer to support your customers wherever they’re based.
At JET IT Services – Managed IT Services Provider in China we use their services to support customers that are far away and need IT support.
Benefits:
1. Save time!
2. Quick delivery
3. Quick turnaround.
Issues:
1. Trust?
Collaboration and Learning
Don’t know how to communicate effectively with your team?
Use global communication tools.
For example, you can use Microsoft Teams, Slack, DingTalk and others.
Benefits:
1. Easy communication with all the colleagues
2. Easy setup
3. Easy management and control
How to?
Contact Microsoft or the companies mentioned above.
Spending too much money for the in-person course(s) for your employees?
Increase your and your team knowledge or upskill your employees by using online business training (i.e. Coursera)
Benefits:
1. Easier to roll out
2. Consistent
3. Users can access it at any time / any place that fits their schedules
How to?
Check Coursera, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning and others.
Personally, I’m using edugo.ai to improve my Chinese.
How can you stay connected to your documents moving around?
Synchronize your smartphone to the cloud (i.e. Microsoft 365 or DingTalk or Wecom, etc.) to stay connected wherever you go.
Benefits:
1. Access from anywhere.
2. Have multiple access points based on your needs.
3. Increased productivity.
4. Easy sharing.
5. With cloud infrastructure, data backup is also easier and can be regularly made with no additional effort for the users on the move (thanks to Corrado Licata for the comment)
5.5 Pay attention to security setup…MFA all the way!!!
For example, you can use your phone to access your PDF files for your customers, send them via WeChat or Whatsapp, or use your phone as a projector…Your fantasy is the only limit.
And security.
How to?
Setup an account with Microsoft or your preferred productivity cloud vendor.
Afraid of the cloud?
Build an Intranet for local file sharing for your office/factory (use a NAS or a server).
Benefits:
1. Easily share information
2. Knowledge management
3. Improve collaboration and feedback
4. Create engaging content
5. Build a transparent culture
6. Connect distributed employees
How to?
Talk to your IT team or IT outsourced vendor and discuss the benefits above and how to achieve them.
How can you do customer service?
Use social media.
Benefits:
1. You can handle multiple queries at the same time.
2. You can prepare FAQs for your customers and/or for your CS – customer service team to follow
3. You can create easy SOPs – standard operating procedures
4. You can either use in-house or outsource based on your needs and budget
How to?
Use services like Facebook, Twitter, Tencent with WeChat and Weibo Corporation for China, Kakao Corp and LINE Corp , or any big social media player in your region.
How to handle customer issues?
Use an online help desk or ticket system.
Benefits:
1. Receive and handle customer issues.
2. You can measure your service delivery
3. You can evaluate your team’s performance.
4. Your employees will be able to handle more tickets. And, Your customers want to talk to people…not machines.
How to?
You can use various solutions like Atlassian, SolarWinds, Zendesk, Zoho Desk, osTicket in cloud, etc. If I’ve missed any other good one, let me know in the comments.
How do you get feedback from your customers?
Use an online survey or questionnaire.
Benefits:
1. Prepare easily
2. You can send it to multiple people
3. You can create forms and easily get excel sheets to measure your performance
4. You can keep track for the future
How to?
You can use various solutions such as SurveyMonkey.
Other options: GetFeedback, SoGoSurvey, Zoho Survey and Google.
If I’ve missed any other good one, let me know in the comments (a few links in the comments too).
How can you save time online?
Unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read.
Whitelist and blacklist emails to avoid spammers.
Set up rules to automate the process.
Work on the notifications (either remove them or use the Pomodoro technique for the emails).
Benefits:
1. Save TIME!
2. Less emails to give attention to.
3. Automate tedious processes.
3. 5 Avoid spammers…unless you want to make a TED Conferences speech.
But with a big caveat: ask for permission!
If they’ve agreed with opt-in form, then you can send weekly or monthly updates.
WARNING: Don’t send hundreds of emails at the same time, otherwise the strong email providers will tag you as a spammer.
Use the previous tips to collect marketing material and then share via emails to reach out.
Mailchimp is the easiest solution to manage your email newsletter.
In the comments, you can find some examples of companies doing good email marketing.
Benefits:
1. Customers have approved and will read the emails
2. You can benefit from automation
Issues:
1. Time management
Where to start with your marketing?
Share your knowledge for free.
For example, I share easy tech tips with my viewers on LinkedIn and focus on SMEs. The tech tips can be implemented by everyone with some time.
I then repost it on my company page, at JET IT Services – Managed IT Services Provider in China.
Benefits:
1. Build a strong presence
2. Deliver good content for my network
3. Keep updated with tech changes and make it easy for connections
Issues:
1. Time-consuming
2. Find the right niche
But it’s worth and time well spent. People will thank you and refer you to other businesses. You never know which doors it will open.