Impact of E-commerce
E-commerce is increasingly shaping how small business owners conduct their activities. With proper customer value and cash flow management, E-commerce has helped small businesses incur a significant increase in revenue and better customer awareness. According to Cadden and Leuder (2012), the management should pay close attention to what is offered now and how it can be made better. With this in mind, the owners will be a step closer to improving customer experience. E-commerce’s role at this point is to ensure there are enough tools and apps that allow customers to merchandise online before they can buy a given product. Other customer engagement tools, e.g. Live Chat, are critical to improving the experience. Additionally, E-commerce is taking many businesses to regions previously not accessible with brick-and-mortar stores. This, in return, has helped increase sales and prospects in the awareness stage.
E-commerce provides small businesses with more opportunities to attract new customers besides saving time and energy. More specifically, e-commerce websites come with multiple tools that guide the process of analyzing the buying patterns and shopping patterns of new customers. The obtained data is used to optimize the storefront based on customer needs. In addition to this, E-commerce provides users with advanced analytics tools such as FreshMarketer to ensure they are able to analyze the engagement of visitors in real-time.
In doing so, the business owner is able to sell products to a large audience using a mouse click. The reason behind e-commerce’s role in increasing sales is because it is based on the purchase funnel, which is a consumer-focused marketing model (Bruhn & Schnebelen, 2017). This model gives a detailed explanation of the customer journey towards the purchase of products.
Impact of Digital technology
Digital technologies have, in the recent past, been shaping all sectors of the economy more than any other innovation. The inventions of computers and ENIAC, the earliest digital computer introduced in 1946, have changed how people work. More specifically, digital technology and computing have impacted different areas of people’s lives in how they communicate to finance. According to Fachrunnisa et al. (2020), digital technologies such as social media have helped establish new opportunities for remote employment.
The changes currently being experienced in the workplace are restructuring and creating new possibilities for promotions and training. In addition to this, digital communication tools such as mobile phones are making workers more productive and connected. Lastly, digital technology has improved how people interact with different social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.
Small Business Digital Technology
Small businesses are increasingly relying on digital technology for their daily operations. The recent technological advancements from computers, web-based applications to online file storage have impacted small businesses around the globe. However, Fachrunnisa et al. (2020) cautioned that digital technologies can affect businesses positively or negatively depending on the products chosen and how employees use the new systems. One of the main positive impacts of digital technologies relates to sharing and collaborating. It is important to note that small firms prefer staying close to the clients in order to provide the required products and services. Technologies such as e-mail and instant messenger tools exist to facilitate sharing and collaboration. In essence, the ability to share information and receive timely feedbacks are critical to the growth and profitability of the business.
Digital technologies have helped small company owners create flexible work environments. For instance, employees and owners have the option to either work from the office or home. Similarly, digital technologies have simplified the hiring process: managers can now hire talents across the globe, which helps give them a competitive advantage over their rivals. Another positive impact of digital technologies lies in the ability to provide employee training. As Jeffrey and Prasetya (2019) explicated in their study, managers are encouraged to provide training to both new and veteran employees as they continue implementing new technologies in their processes.
Training is useful especially to veteran employees because most of them may resist the new technologies. Overall, small businesses are utilizing technology to reduce operating costs. For example, basic software is helping small companies integrate and automate key functions such as expense monitoring of different departments.
Integrated Technology In Small Business
Small businesses are always seeking new ways of integrating the latest technologies in order to improve performance. While there are many options for technological integration, this presentation proposes the use of Zoho. This is the ultimate tool for small firms interested in finding solutions to some of the problems they face on a daily basis. Zoho has different tools for customer relationship management and reporting features aimed at improving workflow.
With many technological advancements targeting sales, finance, and social media engagement, the use of Zoho CRM allows teams to share data in order to serve customers better. Another best way of integrating the latest technologies in small businesses is through the creation of a pilot program. The program will show the technical feasibility of different technologies as showing how they improve productivity and growth of the business.
Conclusion
Small businnesses are increasingly depending on technology and e-commerce to help with their daily operations. For instance, digital technologies such as social media, multimedia, and mobile phones impact small firms across major industries. Some of the positive impacts of digital technology on small companies include facilitating a better customer experience. To achieve this, small firms use email and instant messenger to ensure they stay connected to their clients.
Similarly, they impact how people communicate and interact besides creating new opportunities for remote employment. On the one hand, some of positive impacts of e-commerce, as discussed earlier, include saving time and energy, improving visitor tracking and analytics and providing new opportunities to attract customers. Lastly, while there are many options that small businesses can use to integrate the latest technologies, the commonly used is Zoho.
References
Bruhn, M., & Schnebelen, S. (2017). Integrated marketing communication–from an instrumental to a customer-centric perspective. European Journal of Marketing. Web.
Cadden, D., & Leuder, S. (2012). Small business management in the 21st century. Flat World Knowledge.
Fachrunnisa, O., Adhiatma, A., Lukman, N., & Ab Majid, M. N. (2020). Towards SMEs’ digital transformation: The role of agile leadership and strategic flexibility. Journal of Small Business Strategy, 30(3), 65-85.
Jeffrey, I., & Prasetya, A. B. (2019). The employee performance assessment and employee training, on employee intension. Jurnal Aplikasi Manajemen, 17(1), 56-65.