5 Technology Tips Every Business Owner Can Use

Sometimes, being a business owner can seem like a non-stop uphill climb. Of course, that’s part of the fun, right? Still, if you’d like a little extra help getting to the summit, these technology tips should help.

1. Take It to the Cloud

The cloud is everywhere these days and for good reason. It makes life so much easier on everyone. As a business owner, you can store all kinds of documents on the cloud and rest assured they’ll remain secure. You also don’t have to worry that they’ll be taxing your digital resources. It’s also easy to grant permission to other parties, so you can share them with employees and customers from one central location. They can make changes without needing to hit “reply all” on an email.

RELATED: 7 APPS EVERY ENTREPRENEUR SHOULD HAVE 

No matter where you are, the cloud is available. Bring up an important document on your phone, tablet or computer from anywhere in the world.

2. Ditch Pricey PoS Solutions

Point of sale solutions have always been necessary for B2C companies that accept credit and debit cards. Unfortunately, they’ve also been rather expensive, traditionally. This can be a huge burden for small businesses trying their best to compete with larger organizations.

These days, though, solutions like Square make it possible to easily read a card and accept a payment, just like you used to do with PoS devices. Whether you own a food truck or are a babysitter, your overhead just got a lot lower without having to sacrifice any funds.

3. Rewards Programs Are Easy

You always want to be incentivizing your customers, but in the past, this usually meant clumsy and expensive reward programs. Well, not anymore. Loyalty programs like Perka, Belly and FiveStars make it extremely easy to turn every customer into a repeat buyer.

4. Accounting Has Never Been Easier

As a small business, hiring on a full-time accountant may not be realistic. However, if you don’t have a background in accounting, trying to run the books on your own could become detrimental. It could even land you in legal trouble eventually.

That’s why you should look into titles like Wave Accounting, Freshbooks and Shifthub. These are just three of a number of cloud-based platforms that will make your accounting needs something you can easily handle on your own.

This is just one example of how you can replace the need for an employee with software. Whether it’s HR or customer service, chances are there is a program out there that can come to your aid.

5. Get Social

There is just no excuse to not be using social media as a small business owner. Never has it been easier to reach out and engage with your customers and do so in a meaningful way.

RELATED: 8 APPLE WATCH APPS PERFECT FOR BUSINESS OWNERS 

On top of that, as a small business owner, you can afford to be a bit creative and try new things to connect with the public. Feel free to show the personal side of your business and you may find that people repay you with revenue.

Being a small business owner is never easy, but that’s also no reason to make things unnecessarily harder on yourself. With these technology tips, your business goals should be that much easier to obtain.