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Small Businesses Relying on Cloud Computing and Mobile Apps to Simplify Operations

The mobile revolution is on a new high. As per a new market study, 64 percent of small businesses located across Canada, Australia, UK, and the US are now running their entire operations in the Cloud. These figures were merely 37 percent in the year 2015.

Furthermore, 68 percent of these firms make use of mobile or web-based apps for their daily business activities.

Study Reveals Interesting Facts on Cloud and App Usage…

Industry experts opine that the growth is by no way a surprise. Several small business owners are making use of apps like Facebook, LinkedIn etc in their everyday lives. Many of these firms are also using apps for purposes of invoicing, billing, as well as time management.

The market study gathered responses from 2,000 small business owners in Canada, Australia, UK, and the US. The majority of these business owners employed one to 50 employees.

Out of five small businesses, more than two reported following as their biggest challenges –

  • Controlling costs
  • Reducing expenses

Whereas, following were the top factors considered by different businesses for integrating apps –

  • Improving cash flow
  • Simplifying Customer billing
  • Time management

About half of these small businesses reported judging a specific technology on the basis of whether it will help to increase their revenues. Small companies are mainly looking to expand their business, and hence anything that helps them in cash flow and minimizing expenses has the real worth.

Invoicing based apps are popular as they cut down the time that would be otherwise taken for some business owner to get paid. Paper invoices usually attract a payment via check in about 30 days. With a really useful app, businesses have the option to get their money wired in a span of 8 days, while half of the businesses receive payment the same day.

68 percent small businesses reported deploying 4 apps on an average, the study revealed. Furthermore, 66 percent of such businesses said in the survey that they used mobile for running their business.

Pros and Cons…

Several small business leaders were not that much willing to move their systems to Cloud. However, they did so due to the availability of all software in Cloud.

Cloud-based apps enable the software vendor to provide better support & real time updates. But, it must be noted here that those monthly/yearly subscription models tend to cost business owners higher as time elapses compared to the pay-once models deployed in past. Cloud-based apps also allow quicker updates besides increased accessibility & mobility.

As per the report, app priorities for global small business owners comprised gains in privacy, cost and security. Price though still remains one of the biggest concerns both in terms of longer-term costs as well as control. Most of the app services demand a monthly fee instead of a single payment for the complete system and don’t protect small business users in case there is any rise in that fee over time.

Critical Tips for Small Business Owners…

The biggest barrier for global small businesses in regard to app adoption is the number available. 41 percent business owners reported the availability of too many options to choose from. These businesses also stated that they were not sure that which of these apps will be ideally suited for their business needs.

Some other barriers were –

  • Cost (39%)
  • Complexity (23%)

It’s recommended that business owners must look at the reviews of apps and search for only those apps that help them solve a specific business problem. Several apps have a free trial period too; so, you can try them without fear.

Pravin Gupta is the Digital Marketing at Techarex Networks. Using his vast experience in business and technology domains, he has produced several articles and blogs on a variety of subjects related to business and QuickBook Cloud Hosting. In his free time, he loves surfing the web and exploring interesting places around the world.

Written By

Techarex Networks is a reputed Cloud & managed services provider assisting clients to make smooth migration to the Cloud. With headquarters in Texas, Techarex.net has been serving clients across the globe on account of its strong & robust infrastructure and massive expertise in the Cloud domain.

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