“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses.” – Henry Ford
Many entrepreneurs start their business with the paradigm of “my business is small, it doesn’t require systems”, “technology is expensive”, “I don’t understand those things”, without taking into account that technology and information systems represent improvements in processes, they are systems designed to increase productivity based on knowledge proven by other companies.
Let’s analyze some advantages offered by some platforms.
Our business on the Internet
Currently, if our business is not on the Internet, it is as if it did not exist, and some people even validate the site on the Internet before buying. Not being a web page developer is no longer an excuse for not having an Internet presence. With Wix you can create a site in minutes, quickly and easily in an assisted manner. If you need to develop a complex site, you also have the option of hiring the service; however, to upload content to the Internet it is no longer necessary to be an experienced Web developer, now it is as easy as editing a document in Word.
(I literally copied and pasted this Blog from my Microsoft Word to the Wix editor)
Possibilities of receiving online payments
E-commerce or online payment processing systems facilitate our customers’ ability to purchase products through their credit cards from anywhere in the world. These payment options are a necessity in the face of current or future pandemics. Haven’t you used UberEats or applications that charge directly to your credit cards? In this way, customers make payments from the comfort of their home or mobile devices. We adapt or someone else will make the sale to our potential client! What solution is fast, secure, and reliable? cuanto.app, we use it because the commissions are lower than Paypal and the way to implement it is faster than through a bank.
Control of my finances online
Imagine for a moment that you decide to take a long trip in your vehicle, for this trip you saved and prepared for months, when you get in the car you realize that you do not have the speedometer, fuel gauge, or other indicators that we normally use on the dashboard; anyway, you decide to start and move forward. As you move forward, you realize that there are no signs on the road that indicate the distance, and you can’t use waze!, all you think you know is how to get there, you know you have fuel and you think the vehicle is in good condition. Could you reach the final destination? How would you know if you are going at an appropriate speed? Could you tell if the vehicle is in good condition as you move forward? How do you know how much is left?
I thought about this example again and again when starting my business, as income, expenses, and new clients appeared, I needed to visualize the information in an orderly manner, otherwise managing the business would be practically blind.
Many businesses operate without tools that allow them to grow in an organized and sustainable way, without indicators that help them manage information more intelligently in order to make decisions based on predictive data, data that allows them to better prepare for the eventual scenarios to face along the way.
Using an online accounting application allows you to have control of income, expenses, banks, inventories, customers and in some countries electronic invoicing. Can you imagine generating a report with a button that allows you to know the payment of your taxes? How about seeing a simple graph that shows us a comparison between what we have invoiced vs what we have spent? Knowing the availability of the account statement of our customers and that they can verify it 24/7 from anywhere. Do you have a system that manages collection automatically?
All the answers to the previous questions are affirmative if you use Alegra, a super simple system to use, 100% Cloud, not like some systems (🍑🌳) that are installed on your computer and die if the hard drive of the equipment is damaged.
Customer portfolio management
As simple as the customer consulting on your page, their data reaches your system, which takes you by the hand in the process that you yourselves designed to attend to your sales and be able to manage the correct follow-up with the team. This is how CRMs work, moreover if you don’t believe me, enter www.painlesspymes.com to the contact area and you will see how quickly we serve you.
PipeDrive CRM is another type of technology with simple implementation, low cost and multiple benefits, since it gives us the possibility to visualize all interactions with our customers from the beginning of contact to the closing of the sale. This is basic if we want to sell more and be able to know in the future which customers to invite for our marketing campaigns, offer or simply to treat the customer as they deserve, with personalized attention. This undoubtedly prevents our customers from feeling that they are contacting a government entity!
A worthy contact for a serious company
No matter how small a business is, the first impression always counts and counts a lot. It is not the same to give a company telephone number to be contacted than to provide your cell phone number as the only contact (I know what I’m saying, we also went through it at some point), in my opinion I see it almost as important as having an Internet domain. Haven’t you ever wondered why there are still companies with Hotmail or Gmail emails?
Imagine that after a meeting with that important client, you agree to send him the proposal for thousands of dollars, where in the content of the proposal you talk about your offer, presence in the market and also stories, finally you send the information to the client and he receives your valuable offer from yourbusinessname@gmail.com or Hotmail.
Internet domains are so economical that you get them from $12 USD onwards, such as telephone lines for your company, which you pay from $5, $10, $15 USD onwards.
IP telephone exchanges such as 3CX used by AirFrance, American Express or the Intercontinental Hotel chain, allow you to have a telephone system that is cheaper than the Smartphone that you possibly carry in your pocket and with a lower consumption plan, this without counting that it is very likely that the calls are much cheaper using your 3CX exchange.
These are technologies used by large companies, which are within everyone’s reach, only not everyone knows it!
Increase productivity
I have said it before, «not using Microsoft’s collaboration technologies and continuing to send emails to edit documents is like saving the files on a floppy disk, going up to the 10th floor of the office, looking for the person you should deliver the document to, giving them the disk, waiting for them to edit it, returning to your position with the updated information and praying that they have not mistakenly saved the photo file of their dog and having to go up again repeating the process». This happens with emails, they come and go, come and go with a thousand different versions and sometimes they send you incorrect documents!
Microsoft is not just Windows as we knew it for years, nor the Office that the pirate technician from the neighborhood illegally installed for us, Microsoft solutions give you alternatives to manage your email with your own domain (a worthy contact for a serious company) and better than Gmail, because it also gives you your Office in comfortable packages that range from $5 USD per month onwards. The difference between the neighbor’s pirate package and Microsoft is that Microsoft gives you support through us its partners or directly with them 24/7, with many staff with thousands of knowledge in support.
The new Office 365 applications help us when we start to manage our data in secure sites in the cloud, have evaluations for our customers, use teams for our video calls and work sessions, whether with our customers or with our collaborators, they give us the possibility to manage our documentation in a format that almost everyone knows and many more benefits, that will help us to be more productive and even reduce costs.
In conclusion, to start a business, be it the small fondita (small restaurant), the tattoo studio, the architecture firm, the coffee plantation or the medical office, we must start by building solid foundations, that allow us to grow in an organized and sustained manner, using the set of technological solutions that we consider best adapt to our needs or even advising us with experts in the field to determine which ones adapt to our business model, so that making mention to the initial quote “let’s not wait for faster horses, if we currently already have vehicles”
