Emerging Tech Applications for Small to Medium-Scale Enterprises

A successful business owner always keeps an eye on what’s happening in tech. Many small business owners might not want to take the risk of being at the forefront of emerging tech — but some of the trends you’re hearing hyped may indeed play a valuable role in efficiency and growth for you small or medium-scale enterprise.

Whether it’s a blockchain-based payment system, or new infrastructures like 5G — it’s always important that your business remains competitive by implementing relevant emerging technologies.

Let’s take a look at some tech trends with the potential to impact your bottom-line, if you’re a small businesses owner:

Software unification

For communication, tech solutions are becoming necessary. Businesses use emails to send documents, Slack to communicate between teams, basecamp to design plans, CRM to manage salesforce and other tools. Many small businesses are using different software solutions at the same time. Chances are your current business is composed of tens if not hundreds of business software and middleware. If it’s so, you might like the statement from Roy Mann, CEO and co-founder, Monday.com:

“Connecting software to run with other software is hard. There is going to be a breakthrough with integration platforms that will allow any software to connect well with any other software.”

That means you can use an all-in-one business software solutions and data only requires to insert once to be used everywhere.

AI against cyber threats

Cybersecurity is a manpower compelled market and this is the reason opportunities for AI automation are vast.

AI has been helping businesses to fight spam and detecting malware. It has already shown immeasurable potential in cyber security across different industries. Likewise, using AI for cyber security solutions will help protect businesses from being a cyber crime victim. Recent developments in AI are bringing a paradigm shift in technology. The technology is growing faster than ever. It’s just a matter of time before the use of AI in cyber security becomes mainstream too. Moreover, the introduction of Artificial Intelligence in other technologies like Blockchain will ensure better security and effectiveness.

The Cloud

Talking about small business technology, cloud computing is definitely not qualified as the latest one. And it nonetheless is important enough for a business to keep in check in the upcoming times. According to RightScale’s Stat of the cloud report, SMBs and big enterprises are concentrating more on utilizing the usage of cloud tech. An efficient solution for an enterprise is definitely cloud-based whether its accounting solution like QuickBooks, CRM solutions like Salesforce, ERP, or anything else. This tech actually provides flexibility and is often termed and tested as more secure. What’s more, that’s gaining popularity? Telecommuting. Once you equip your employees with communication devices, it enables them to access the systems from anyplace or home. NYT earlier reported that in early 2017 as much as 43% of Americans completed their tasks remotely at some point in time. This is what’s positive about cloud-based systems, it allows people to work remotely and that too without compromising the system’s security.

Conventional search moving to voice search

Small businesses have been using SEO tactics to stay on top of the game and blow their competitors out of the water. To rank better in Google is what everyone dreams of. For a very long time, people across the world have been using AI assistants like Cortana, Alexa, and Siri to communicate and shop.

Voice search is transformative. It is changing the way businesses used to work. Local businesses are well aware of this disruptive transformation and they are shifting to voice search. And it’s true that this change will unbox the world of endless possibilities.

There are a lot of reasons why voice search optimization is important. More and more people are making use of their smartphones to voice search. And in voice search, queries are different than typed searches. They are usually conversational and longer.

Is your small business adapting fast enough?

These five tech trends have got the power to establish a competitive edge for a variety of small to medium enterprises. Looking for real-world applications of these emerging technologies to solve your business challenges will allow you to maximize productivity, offer a higher quality services, and nurture stronger relationships with clients.

Emerging Tech Applications for Small to Medium-Scale Enterprises was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.