Today’s world is experiencing technological revolution in many spheres. In the business world for instance, technological revolution is being driven by aspects such as globalization, stiff competition, need to explore new markets, among others.
Issa Asad Florida CEO and businessman says: “It’s important for enterprises that wish to compete effectively to positively embrace and adopt technology.” Mr. Asad is the CEO of Quadrant Holdings and Q Link Wireless, located in South Florida.
The following are Issa Asad top 5 tech tips for small businesses:
1. Bring-Your-Own-Device
Owners of small businesses can maximize on the use of technology by adopting the Bring-Your-Own-Device policy. This is a concept whereby employees are encouraged to bring along personal technological devices such as laptops, smart phones or tablets to their places of work, and then use them to access facilities such as wireless internet.
BYOD is rapidly gaining popularity in the commercial world. In transition economies such as Russia and Brazil, approximately 75% of businesses have already embraced this technology.
It’s also referred to as Bring-Your-Own-Technology, Bring-Your-Own-PC or Bring-Your-Own-Phone.
2. Teleconferencing
Teleconferencing is a technological concept that ought to be adopted by small businesses which need to grow exponentially. It involves mass articulation and exchange of information among multiple devices and several people connected to a telecommunication system in real time.
The telecommunication system supports teleconferencing by providing audio, data or video services by means of telephone, television or computer.
Internet teleconferencing is a component of teleconferencing and involves carrying out a teleconference via a Wide Area Network or internet. It can be broken down further into Internet Telephone Conferencing, Augmented Reality Conferencing, Video Conferencing and Web Conferencing.
Some of the world’s leading vendors of teleconferencing services and software are; ACT Conferencing, WebEx, Adobe Acrobat Connect, Voxeet, CornetCall, TrueConf, Elluminate, Skype and Google Hangouts, among others.
3. Enhancing Security
Businesses should put in place adequate measures that protect technological resources. Proper security measures ensure that an organization’s hardware and software are not susceptible to unauthorized access and/or manipulation by parties who have malicious intentions.
4. Making Good Use of Websites
Websites may be the only contact between business enterprises and prospective customers. It’s therefore important to ensure that they’re easily navigable and have efficient and effective data capture forms.
Businesses that intend to create new websites or upgrade existing ones should take into consideration five important factors (elements of good websites); appearance, Search Engine Optimization, content, website usability and functionality.
Appearance: a good website should have characteristics such as; excellent use of color, easily-readable text, simplicity, meaningful graphics and quality photographs.
Content: ideally, website content should be brief, properly organized, regularly updated, make use of active voice and be written by professional writers.
Functionality: all components ought to work correctly and quickly. They shouldn’t be poorly constructed or broken.
Usability: a good website should be designed with the following characteristics; simplicity, good screen resolution, fast-loading pages, browser -compatibility/ cross -platform, minimal need for scrolling, descriptive link text, consistent layout and logical navigation.
5. Cloud Computing
This is another technological concept that ought to be adopted by businesses which need to use technology to advance their interests. It’s an internet-based computing system that involves provision of shared resources, information and data to computers or other tech devices on demand.
It’s a popular model that facilitates on-demand, convenient and ubiquitous access to a common pool of configured computing resources such as networks, applications, servers and storage services. It provides enterprises with capabilities to process and/or store their data, information and other resources in 3rd part data centers.
Cloud computing essentially depends on resource-sharing to achieve economies of scale and coherence over a network. It consists of two major concepts; shared services and converged infrastructure.
