Why Small Businesses Need to Go Digital

Category: Technology

Going digital is a topic that is widely embraced among individuals of varying ages. The same is true among well-structured businesses and large corporations. Our marketing interactions with small and medium enterprises revealed that going digital is not a welcome topic as it is with going digital on a personal level; the majority of small business and some medium enterprise owners still opined the view that digital technology makes little or no difference to their businesses. While this view sounds true from the surface, it is saturated with errors.  Please follow along as we discuss some of the benefits of digital technology to small and medium enterprises.  But we will first examine a misconception these people have about digital technology and one major issue raised to negate the value of digital technology to small businesses.

The Misconception of Digital Technology

From our interactions with most of the small business owners, we discovered that majority of them are willing to go digital on a personal level but not for their businesses. This is due to the misconception that going digital for their businesses will require that they acquire some expensive and highly sophisticated software such as accounting software and server which are not easy to maintain. While this software is good examples of digital tools, going digital in businesses does not necessarily mean that you have to acquire these expensive tools. With a few less expensive and easy to maintain devices/tools such as smartphones, laptop or desktop computers, simple websites, blogs, eBooks, social media, and flash drives, your business can go digital.

Issue of Extra Cost

The primary and the only perceived/convincing reason many small businesses and some medium enterprises shy away from digitalization is cost. Unfortunately, cost is inevitable to every business. Every stage of business set-up and operations require one type of cost which must be properly managed. Whilst it is very important to give serious consideration to one’s business financial capability before major purchases, a good manager will set out a financial strategy and plans to grow the business and these will entail having reasonable budgets (be it monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annually) for acquiring useful assets that will fast-track the achievement of the overall goal. Investing in digital technology in this modern world is one of the fastest means to grow your business and to achieve its goal.

The Benefits of Going Digital 

According to the United Nation’s publication (UN75 2020 and Beyond), “Digital technologies have advanced more rapidly than any innovation in our history – reaching around  of the developing world’s population in only two decades and transforming societies. “ This could mean that the benefits that come from harnessing digital technology far outweigh the issue of extra cost as the usage rate keeps increasing.

Now, let give attention to few areas (among others) in which your business can benefit from going digital.

1. Access to your enterprise information: When your business goes digital, you can store a large amount of information in a very minute space. This means that this information can be carried around on small devices such as your smartphone and flash drives and accessed anytime, anywhere.

2. Access to other information: With the advent of the internet, people could search for information at a low or no cost. Do you want to know more about a given industry or sector? Just google it. Which business do you want to venture into but have no idea of how it works? Google it. Simply put, you can find information about virtually everything on the net or Google.

3. Marketing and Sales: With the increasing rate of using social media and the internet, modern businesses have discovered that there is no better place to market their products and services than the social media platforms and the internet; the cost is extremely low when compared with the traditional means and the result can be exponentially high when skillfully utilized.  

4. Ease and Speed of Communication: Communication with team members has never been as easy as it is now with advancements in digital technology. A large amount of data, videos and audio files can be transferred to a team member working remotely almost instantaneously at a very high speed.

5. Reduced Cost: Here we come again to the issue of cost. Contrary to the view that going digital brings extra cost; it actually reduces your cost. That misconception arises from what I called imaginative accounting – filled with errors, lack proof or statistics and is not professional. With proper accounting and documentation, you will realize that you reduce your cost when you go digital with your business. Lots of things you do come as if they are free when compared to the traditional ways of doing them before the era of digital world.

It must be said, however, that the benefits discussed here are few compared to what you get in return when you give it a trial. Other benefits you get in the forms of learning and training, opportunities, connectivity and interactions with your team and customers, research and investigation on your products’ performance et cetera.

If you are struggling with how to go digital with your business, please reach out to us at MICB on +44 7876 133319 or send an email directly to us through info@micbtech.com and we will get in touch with you.

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