“Too few small businesses are taking advantage of technology”
New York’s Center for an Urban Future (CUF) is out with a report entitled “Smarter Small Business” as summarized in this AMEX OPEN Forum article. By the way, if you’re not a regular OPEN Forum reader, you should be. The CUF studied over 230 small businesses in New York City and found that “too few small businesses are taking advantage of technology.”
Much of my career has been spent as a principal for small geotechnical consulting engineering firms. We always felt that one of our assets was our size (small) and ability to be agile and to utilize technology to work smarter (more efficient) and be more responsive (work and deliver faster). But to be most effective, our specialized industry needs specialized software. General database or spreadsheet tools are marginally beneficial. Because our industry needs specialty software, the cost of developing these custom software solutions has been very high and required significant outlays of capital for computer hardware. Because of this barrier to entry, large companies that typically lag behind with technology adoption have largely caught up and in some cases passed small geotechnical firms that have not adopted advanced technologies. These companies are using custom designed data management systems to work more efficiently and to get reports to their clients faster.
The consumer mobile device and cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) revolutions are changing the game. These innovations are putting great, affordable, hardware and software tools in our hands, empowering us no matter where we are. With these available tools, the time to digitize our CMET data collection and management processes is here.
Technology is no longer an option for small businesses to remain competitive. It’s absolutely essential in today’s digital age.
As the CUF study states “Technology is no longer an option for small businesses to remain competitive. It’s absolutely essential in today’s digital age.” If you are not using technology to be more efficient and to serve your clients better, you’ll soon be left in the dust by those who are. Are you going to lead the way and show your clients a better way or wait for someone else to do that?.