Small Business Success In 2020: Overcoming Challenges

Small businesses and startups have today become a major driver of change across geographies irrespective of the business domain. This paradigm shift has been brought about by a number of factors with technology being the number one among them. With powerful digital tools and channels, small businesses were able to disruptively grab market share from established business houses with lower costs and fewer resources. 

2020 looks to be yet another exciting year for such businesses. But before they reap the benefits, we feel that there are still some challenges small businesses need to overcome to remain competent and successful in 2020. Here are 6 of them explained:

1. Employee Engagement

Your employees are your biggest strength. If they are happy and committed to your customers, then business growth is guaranteed to happen irrespective of the strategy you follow. However, building an engaged workforce is no easy task. Companies must try out innovative and intuitive ways to engage each and every employee in the workforce like creating channels for them to transparently share feedback and opinion, considering their inputs while taking crucial decisions and so on. 

Employees should feel that their voice is recognized and that leadership is approachable. Higher engagement levels are directly related to better productivity and profitability of teams.

Related Reading: Tips For SMBs To Boost Growth With Increased Employee Engagement

2. Planning and Project Management

A business performs at its optimum when every department is organized and works together to achieve a common objective. This happens when proper planning and seamless project management are in place. 

Irrespective of the size of your workforce, project and task planning needs strict emphasis. Insights from such initiatives will be helpful in deciding the future course of action across multiple departments like recruitment, infrastructure, marketing, and sales. There is a need to bring in effortless project management tools to make it easier for companies to plan and schedule their work and meet customer expectations every time.

3. Cyber Security

It is estimated that in every 39 seconds, a cyber-attack or hack occurs globally. As more small businesses embrace the digital bandwagon, the amount of channels where sensitive data is stored or processed has increased monumentally. This means that there are more avenues for cyber threats to occur and every business big or small must address this issue seriously. 

Any breach of sensitive data can lead to damages worth millions as regulatory bodies and authorities across the globe have tightened their grip on user data security. Small businesses must, in particular, be aware of threats lurking in their digital channels and take appropriate measures to avoid any mishaps.

Related Reading: Top Technology Challenges Faced By Small Businesses

4. Intuitive Marketing

It doesn’t matter much if you have a great product with mouthwatering features. It must be discoverable for potential customers and this is where marketing becomes a key challenge. Today there are tons of channels where small businesses and startups can showcase their offerings to win business deals. The trick is applying intelligence to identify the correct audience, the best-fit approach, the right content and the most cost-effective propagation technique to reach them. 

From email marketing to social media advertising, there are several areas to explore for today’s businesses. Also using smart marketing automation platforms to understand sentiments of customers is also a very fruitful initiative for identifying the best marketing strategy.

5. Customer Experience

You are required to provide a great experience across any channel that customers interact with. They need faster responses to every query or concern they have and delays are usually punished with negative sentiments on social media. Additionally, there is a need to be aware of trends and interests that can be used to offer personalized experiences to customers. To bring all this in one place, small businesses need to have a Customer Relationship Management or CRM solution that is capable of encapsulating all customer relations in one spot and deliver insights to serve them better every time they reach out to you. A satisfied customer is your biggest marketing tool as their positive sentiments about your brand will bring in more customers through referrals.

6. Talent Management

In addition to employee engagement, there needs to be a powerful and seamless collaboration platform within your organization for managing talent. Right from onboarding to payroll and attendance management to complex records and file management, there is a need for seamless digital transformation within the workplace.

Employees demand flexibility in their work with options such as remote work options, shared collaboration spaces with secure file exchange. If you need to create a workplace for the future, it is important to equip your employees with the digital tools that make their work easier.

Related Reading: 5 Digital Capabilities Every Small Business Needs To Invest In 2020

2020 looks to be an exciting year for small businesses that identify their core strengths and invest in mitigating their core challenges. As customers evolve with dynamic needs, small businesses and startups must bring on-board state of the art digital platforms that can help deliver meaningful experiences to end customers. This is where platforms like Infince can be a game-changer. From being the digital backbone of your small business and handling every critical aspect from employee collaboration to customer relationship management, Infince can be your success mantra for 2020. Get in touch with us to know more.

Tips For SMBs To Boost Growth With Increased Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is today considered to be the responsibility of an organization as a whole. Earlier, it was merely seen as a focus area of the HR department and several small companies did not have a clear vision about employee engagement and how it can impact their growth. All they did was organize a few monthly fun activities in the office and expected employees to be motivated on their own to return to work every day from their homes. But times have changed and studies have shown that teams with greater engagement levels show profitability levels 21% higher than the rest. 

Your small business, irrespective of the domain in which you operate, should include workforce engagement as one of the key pillars of growth. Only when your employees show dedication and passion to contribute to building valuable experiences for your customers, will your business achieve desired levels of growth. If you are still wondering how, here are 5 ways in which employee engagement can instill more growth for your small business enterprise:

Related Reading: 5 Digital Capabilities Every Small Business Needs To Invest In 2020

1. Better Research

As a start-up or small business, every aspect of your operation is critical. People handling each department needs to be aware of the fundamental rules in building great customer experiences through their individual focus areas. 

In a small business, there may not be many avenues where employees can be offered training sessions on improving and incorporating best practices in their individual roles. They need to take up research and learning exercises to improve their competence on their own. To do so, they need motivation and this is exactly what employee engagement initiatives can bring to the table. When employees are engaged, they will feel energized to try out new innovations in their field of operation. They will research it, find out best practices and seamlessly drive value from implementing the practice in their daily routine.

2. Ownership and Responsibility

Startups and smaller businesses often face the challenge of meeting bigger expectations with fewer resources. As such, the workforce in such scenarios will have to be autonomous to a great extent. They need to make decisions on assigned tasks with authority and in most cases without supervisory monitoring. For this to happen, employees need to be empowered enough to take ownership of the tasks assigned to them. 

Each component of your business should be run by the respective employee as if it were their own business unit. Such a high level of commitment and sense of ownership comes only if people are recognized and engaged at work. When they have seamless work experience along with the right enablers to help finish their jobs faster and with more efficiency, employees will demonstrate ownership of their activities at a bigger scale. This will positively influence the way customer service is delivered through your business channels leading to better revenue potential in the long run.

Related Reading: Top Technology Challenges Faced By Small Businesses

3. Talent Retention

Studies show that in the United States alone, the cost of losing an employee is above 15,000 dollars. This is the turnover cost incurred for replacing them with a similarly skilled worker. As a small business owner, hiring and retaining the right talent is often a tricky perspective considering the fact that the options available for a potential candidate are numerous. If you have found a good talent, then it is best to retain them and use their skills to nurture your business. Here is where employee engagement can add to the retention experience. 

By enabling a comfortable working environment with autonomous decision-making freedom, you can empower workers to explore their talents in all possible ways. Benefits such as healthy work-life balance, recognition of work done and seamless career progression options can improve engagement levels of employees. This will, in turn, make them stay with you for a longer period thereby saving you from bearing a huge talent replacement cost in the long run.

4. Boost Profitability through Increase in Productivity

When employees are engaged, they perform better and with more efficiency leading to higher results and productivity levels in the organization. Global consulting firm Wyatt Watson reports that companies that paid attention to employee engagement initiatives were able to generate 26% higher revenue per employee. 

This increase in productivity will reflect in your business growth as well. When more value can be contributed by each employee, the overall profitability of the business scales up. This is a win-win situation for everyone.

5. Improved Collaboration

In every workspace, irrespective of the team size, one of the biggest drivers of growth is team bonding. “Unity is Strength” is a motto that every business must incorporate in its work culture. By bringing on-board powerful employee engagement platforms that enable seamless collaboration between your employees, small business players can drive better results through teamwork. Modern technology solutions like Infince enable team members working from anywhere in the world to organize meetings, share files, work on a project together over virtual workspaces thereby enabling faster fulfillment of customer service. 

When everyone in the team is engaged, they will be willing to help each other with individual tasks and go the extra mile to support colleagues who may be facing challenges. This generous effort of teamwork will reflect positively in the brand value your small business propagates to the outside world.

Related Reading: 5 Tips To Foster Team Collaboration In A Small Business Environment

Workplace engagement is a key driver of growth in today’s highly competitive market for small businesses. Entrepreneurs need to have a dedicated vision to improve engagement levels within the company and enable a better working environment for each employee. Here is where cloud-based platforms like Infince can be the game-changer for your organization.

From creating powerful intranets that enable enterprise-wide communication and collaboration to file sharing, Infince can help drive an engaging culture in your organization. Get in touch with us to explore how to keep your employees happy, engaged and motivated to come back to work every day.