by Grace Barone
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the winds of change are blowing, and small businesses must adapt to thrive. The digital revolution has brought forth a wave of transformative technologies, presenting unparalleled opportunities for growth and efficiency. From streamlining operations to reaching wider audiences, this blog explores why small businesses should embrace the power that a digital transformation brings. As well as what they can do to make that transformation. Join us on this journey as we unveil the secrets to staying competitive, connecting with customers, and propelling your business into the digital age.
Digital Transformation. What does it Mean?
Technology is here and its here to stay. Small businesses need to adapt to the fast paced advancements happening in technology if they want to stay afloat. Businesses are facing issues like supply chain shortages, staffing issues and over all economic uncertainty. There has never been a better time for small businesses to go through any variation of a digital transition than right now. Small business owners have more tools at their disposal than ever before. There is a lot of room for updates within every business type and technology that will help your day to day operations.
The term digital transformation is very broad and can come across as intimidating. Digital transformation for small businesses refers to the process of implementing digital technology into aspects of your business operations, workflows, and customer interactions. By going through a digital transformation, you are using technology to increase your businesses efficiency. It also helps make more data driven decisions, and adapt to the changing market dynamics of the digital age.
Starting with the Basics
Depending on what your business looks like, you may need to start from ground zero with your digital transformation. The world of technology moves incredibly fast. If you don't have the time or proper resources to implement every new form of technology that gets reviled, you may feel like your business is too far behind to catch up. You just need to go through the digitization and digitalization stages first. These are the building blocks that are required to be able to implement new technology into your business. This may sound blunt but, once you get everything on a computer, you'll be able to implement whatever technology or automation you want. This is a quick run down of what to do first.
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Digitization:
This is converting any data you may have into digital files and saving them on a company drive. If you're Gen Z or a millennial this may sound arbitrary, but many business owners still record data with pen and paper. This will not only help you stay organized, it will also ensure nothing gets lost, and will help reduce your paper usage. By having digital files of important data, you are laying down the ground work to ensure an easy transition.
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Digitalization:
This is the use of digital data (that you now have from the digitation step) and technology to improve your business process. An example of this is sharing a sales data on a company cloud drive with your sales department. Or, having your inventory spread sheet clear and organized so you're able to quickly identify trends and make better purchasing decisions.
This is basically all a "Digital Transformation" really is. Using the digital technology available to you, to make your business better. Create a game plan for how you want to approach your businesses digital transformation before committing to anything. You also want to have a good understanding of what tools are available to you and which ones will give your business the best results. Mindlessly implementing technology without a real plan of how to make it helpful to you is counter productive. Start with the basics of your business and see if there is room for growth. Starting off with the small stuff is the easiest way to test the waters before a full blown transformation.
Moving Forward with your Digital Transformation
So now you know the two main concepts of a digital transformation, digitization and digitalization. Next is how do you actually move forward and start making changes within your business.
1. Analog Data
This is where digitization is important. Analog data in this instance, refers to any information that is recorded in a physical format. This could mean a variety of things, depending on your business type. If you're keeping track of inventory by writing it down on a piece of paper, keeping transaction receipts or invoices in a folder, having your employees write down their hours, etc. Automating some of these tasks would bring your business the most efficiency. But, not everyone is quite ready to start implementing artificial intelligence and that's okay.
Simply scanning any important documents, creating excel spread sheets for inventory tracking, use time clock software to keep track of employee hours. Those are just a few examples, look around your business and see what can be converted to a digital file. I'll go into more specific ways to make changes later. These small changes will make these tasks much less tedious, time consuming and disorganized.
2. POS System
Are you able to accept all forms of payment? Cash, card, mobile and EBT if your business is qualified? If you're only accepting cash, or your machine only allows the swipe and sign method of card transactions, you should upgrade your point-of-sale system. With the advancements that have been happening in the world of POS machines, a lot of your digital transformation goals can be easily met by simply upgrading your POS system. For example, the Clover POS systems have an entire app market with tons of tools to help with digitalization. It also has innovative payment solutions like allowing restaurants to offer pay-at-the-table, and self service options.
Leaping into the Digital World
So, all of your information is now a digital file. Next, you want to think about the most time consuming or convoluted tasks at your business. My guess would be inventory and payroll, for every business. Pick-up and delivery orders for restaurants and appointment scheduling for something like a salon. Using automation tools for these tasks, will take care of them fast and accurately.
Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping is the systematic recording, organizing, and maintenance of financial transactions and records for your business. It ensures accurate and up-to-date financial information, tracking income, expenses, and facilitating informed decisions, tax calculations, and regulatory compliance. This is a very important job that has a lot of room for human error. QuickBooks is a software that takes care of all the manual labor involved with balancing the books. It saves business owners an average of 300 hours a year, on time spent doing this task.
Inventory Management
This is a tool that can be taken care of with a modern POS system. All of Clovers POS systems have the option of downloading an automated inventory management system. By having something like this connected to your POS system, you get accurate and real time inventory tracking. Your employees will never have to spend hours on inventory ever again. You can set alerts and the system will tell you when to restock an item. It also has the ability to analyze the sales data with the inventory information. You can now make more informed decisions about what to re-order based on what your customers are buying.
If you want to go even further down the digital transformation road, you can show your inventory on Google. By doing this, customers will be able to know what your business carries. By having that information easily searched, you are increasing the chances of customers going to you over a competitor. Pointy is a software available for download on your Clover system that helps you get your inventory on Google.
Employee Management
The staff that you have on your team is vital. No matter how many employees you have, managing people takes a lot of time and there's a lot to it. Time cards, tax information, paychecks, schedules. Not to mention other issues like call offs or being short staffed. This is a big stressor for business owners right now. There are many resources and new technology that will make employee management hassle free.
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Shift Scheduling and Clocking In
HomeBase Time Clock, is an app that you can download on your Clover POS system. Your employees can clock in right on your POS system and you can manage it all even if you're not at the physical business. It has free scheduling abilities, options to send employee shift reminders, you can do payroll right on the app, it will send alerts to you if an employee is late, and more. Having an employee management system like this, will ensure everyone is accounted for and being compensated correctly.
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Staffing Issues
For a few different reasons, small businesses across the country are facing the issue of being short staffed. Without enough employees, customer attention suffers. You always want to make your customers experience at your business a positive one. Sometimes that just cant be achieved if you don't have proper staffing. Customers have noticed the staffing issues within small businesses and are much more understanding than you may think, especially the younger generations.
In reality, customers prefer that small businesses use the technology available to them. 73% of customers said they prefer some sort of automation over a live staff member. One way that your business can appeal to customers through automation, is with the addition of a kiosk. Clover has recently started offering the Clover Kiosk. This is especially helpful for a quick-serve restaurant environment. A kiosk allows customers to take control of their order, and can relive pressure if your business is short staffed. In fact, purchasing a kiosk can save you a large amount of money on employee wages. You can learn all about the Clover Kiosk here.
More Ways to Digitalize
These are just a few example that will really propel a business forward. Implementing the right technology will ignite positive change within your business. Here are some other ways your business can continue to grow within the digital space.
- Create social media pages and spend time interacting with people and posting. Gen Z and millennials are starting to use social media as search engines. So having your brand present on social media can increase visibility and bring in more customers.
- Online ordering. If your restaurant doesn't offer online ordering, you are missing out on a lot of revenue. The majority, of people prefer ordering online for pick up and delivery. But a lot of restaurants end up resorting to offering it on third party sites like UberEats, which charge high fees. Clovers Smart Online Order lets you offer your own online ordering website and app. It makes the whole process simple and even helps route your deliveries.
- E-Commerce, selling goods and services online. This can be huge for your business. Online shopping is becoming the norm and having the option of buying products online will get you tapped into a much larger customer base.
Doing Your Digital Transformation Right
There are so many reasons why small businesses should go through a digital transformation. But make sure you are going slow and properly training your employees on the new technology. If used right, your business will see changes like, staff retention, customer satisfaction, cost savings, and over all higher efficiency. If you want to get started with your digital transformation, get in contact with us at getvms.com or by filling out the form below. We can help you make the first step digitalization by getting you set up with a Clover POS system with the right apps for your business. We also offer website help and the Clover Kiosk. If funds are a concern, we also have a working capital program available, so you can modernize your business without financial issues. Future-proof your small business and utilize the technology made to assist you.