Month: July 2023

The last few years have seen a huge amount of change for small and medium-sized businesses, especially around processes, applications and digitisation. Business owners have learnt how to be adaptive and agile and as we continue to operate in an uncertain economic climate, that ability to anticipate and respond to challenges and opportunities will continue to be key throughout 2023 .

We’ve put together a list of some of the anticipated challenges for SMEs over the next year.

Increased costs

The cost of living crisis is effecting many consumers and businesses. High inflation levels, increased operational and materials costs have meant small businesses have had to re-evaluate their budgets.

There’s little sign of the economy recovering in the near future, so this will remain a key factor in almost every decision-making process for SMEs in 2023. Assessing the technology you use on a regular basis will help identify where digitisation and automation may help streamline processes and workflows.

Data protection

Customers are increasing pressure on companies to keep their personal data safe. This isn’t a new trend, but it’s still one of the most critical customer needs for businesses across all industries as cyberattacks and identity theft cases grow.

Customer demand for data protection is backed up by increasingly tight regulations surrounding how we handle data. The European Union is looking to make a number of improvements to data protection laws with the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. The UK government is also looking to overhaul their version of GDPR to reflect increased threat levels. Taking a proactive approach to protecting and securing your business-critical information, online and on your network with a 3rd party provider is highly recommended.

The changing ways we work

How we work has changed significantly over the last few years, and there’s no going back to the way things used to be. We’re seeing more businesses of all sizes using Unified Communications to support their hybrid working and flexible workspaces as team collaboration is the most important way to improve business processes and culture.

With the current job market being full of candidates looking for a better employee experience, businesses need to adapt to modern ways of working to ensure they can not only hire new talent but retain their best employees. This includes checking in with employees at regular intervals to see if they have everything they need to do their job and asking how employers can make improvements.

Flexibility is now the name of the game, and businesses need to keep up. They’ll need to adopt smarter technologies that enable collaboration and boost productivity with remote and hybrid teams.

Increasing security threats

SMEs are increasingly adopting new vendors and software as they digitise more processes. This has made cybersecurity more complex than ever and cyberattacks are rising. Did you know that 46% of all cyber breaches impact businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees?

Regularly reviewing your security against an ever-changing threat landscape and identifying gaps that make your business vulnerable to attacks is imperative. The first step to securing your business is a cybersecurity assessment that considers your own security compliance, your employees, potential risks and the risks of your vendors and partners.

Saying SMEs need to monitor their data for potential security breaches is easy, but putting that advice into practice can be more complex. We offer JT Cyber Protection to help you keep track of your digital presence and protect your business from threats.

Of course, the best way to deal with threats to your business and your data is to prevent them in the first place with our Managed and Automated Security Operations Centre (SOC) Services. All JT Managed Security products offer a proactive approach to protecting and securing your business-critical information, online and on your network, using a range of dedicated Cybersecurity Services.

Being a small business owner means wearing many hats: chief executive, visionary, team morale-booster, accountant, customer service rep, marketing expert, and quality control inspector, to name just a few. This constant juggling act can be time consuming—but hiring dedicated staff for all of these tasks can be cost-prohibitive.

Thankfully, artificial intelligence (AI) technology has come leaps and bounds in recent years, enabling small business owners to delegate once-tedious tasks to helpful AI assistants. These days, many of these platforms are surprisingly affordable, meaning that the dream of automation that makes your life easier—and your business more efficient—may not be as far-fetched as you think. Learn more about how AI can help streamline small business operations and even attract new customers.

 What is AI?

In a nutshell, AI is machine-based intelligence—which differs from "natural intelligence," i.e. the type of intellect inherent in humans and other animals, because it's rooted in algorithms versus biology. AI can be programmed to answer questions or solve problems in a way that mimics human perception and reasoning. Today's AIs are typically considered "narrow," in that they're very good—often, better than people—at performing specific tasks, but not "generally" intelligent in the same way as human beings. Though it might sound like something out of a science fiction film, most of us already use AI in some capacity daily. You're probably talking to an AI, for instance, when you ask your phone's voice-activated assistant for an update on the forecast.

AI also underpins recommendation engines on popular audio or video sites, as well as for major e-retailers (those "since you watched/bought T, you might also like K" features on a website). Most wayfinding and navigation apps use AI to provide route optimization and traffic updates. When it comes to business operations, AI plays many different roles, primarily in the arena of process automation.

AI in business examples include optimizing employee or staff schedules, tracking inventory, streamlining customer relationship management (CRM), improving security, deploying adaptive Wi-Fi, and even bolstering your marketing efforts. What's more, this type of technology is increasingly becoming accessible to businesses of all sizes—not just huge corporations with big budgets and bottom lines.

Why is AI important for small businesses?

AI provides a useful compromise for small business owners who know they need to take something off their plate but don't know who or what to turn to. It provides the ability to automate time-consuming processes at a fraction of the cost of hiring dozens of full-time employees.

Today, there are hundreds of dedicated AI-based services you can deploy to help manage your business operations, from chatbot services to CRM software to order fulfillment platforms. You can use AI to train your sales reps, handle basic human resources tasks, automatically adjust your office Wi-Fi based on usage patterns, or glean valuable insights about buyer behavior. Many of these services are offered on a monthly or annual subscription basis, making them a relatively affordable, turnkey option.

One important thing to note about AI is that it's dependent upon data—and you need a lot of it for machine learning (ML), the technology that underpins how most AIs learn and adapt, to make the best possible decisions for the task at hand. In some cases, this means the more you use an AI platform, the better it serves you. For instance, if you're seeking to optimize an email newsletter, the more data points (opens, clickthrough rates, etc.) you collect—and the more emails you send—the better an AI can offer suggestions about how to improve your campaigns.

Common uses of AI for small business operations

We already covered a few of the big buckets that AI is used for when it comes to small business optimization—marketing is a major one. You can choose from hundreds of services that help you create and automate marketing campaigns, from industry leaders like Mailchimp, which uses AI for email marketing, to Salesforce, which employs AI to help predict customer behavior. You can use AI to transcribe important client meetings or distill team meeting notes. Chatbots are another common AI use case for streamlining business operations. Companies like ChatPath and Zendesk provide platforms that simplify integrating chatbot services on your own website or social media accounts. If you run a corporate Facebook page, you can take advantage of Messenger's built-in chatbot for handling customer inquiries—particularly for simple questions like the features included in a specific product offering or details on your return policy. For restaurants offering delivery or pick-up services, AI chatbots can even perform tasks like taking online orders.

Cyber-security and fraud prevention is another major area where AI can come in handy. Most major security software systems these days employ AI in some way—for example, to scan for security flaws, reduce response time when a threat is detected, and take the pulse of the larger threat ecosystem. Services like JT Total Wi-Fi for Business, powered by Plume WorkPass, too, use AI to ensure that only legitimate users can access your office Wi-Fi networks.

Benefits of AI for small business success

On top of the obvious cost savings, AI provides many tangential benefits to small businesses—not the least of which includes incalculable advantages of a lower stress load. When AI takes on the heavy lifting of some of your most time-consuming tasks, it allows you to dedicate more time and effort to elevating other parts of your business operations. Good AI is a little like good design—when done well, you hardly notice it at all.

Take Plume WorkPass, for instance, which helps turn your work Wi-Fi network into a fully connected business intelligence platform. This membership-based service provides adaptive Wi-Fi, which ensures that whatever systems, software, or Internet-of-Things based integrations you use to streamline your business will run smoothly.

Clunky, outdated technologies still hold back many small businesses. These sometimes costly systems put businesses at risk of system crashes, slow Wi-Fi speeds, cybersecurity breaches, and decreased productivity. If you're struggling with these issues, you're not alone. As a study from ZenBusiness found, over 50% of employees said their workplace technology was outdated—including computers, software, and cloud-based platforms. And almost 100% said this affected their ability to be productive. That's where smart devices come in.

With innovative technologies like smart thermostats, smart lighting, and adaptive Wi-Fi, small businesses can increase efficiency and safety—and future-proof their companies for a tech-driven world. Here, we'll unpack just why smart technology is important for small businesses and how you can use smart devices to meet your business goals.

Benefits of smart devices for small businesses

First, let's look at how smart devices can benefit small businesses:

• Increased security. Smart security systems and smart locks can detect motion, trigger automatic alarms, and monitor your business around the clock to increase safety.
• Enhanced productivity. Smart assistants and cloud services can help you automate manual tasks, track productivity, and optimize key business goals.
• Improved energy efficiency. With smart thermostats and smart lighting, you can reduce energy costs and improve sustainability.
• Remote management. You can manage and monitor smart devices from anywhere, making it easier to run your business on the go.

Technology that is holding your small business back

Now, for the hard part: Being honest about the outdated technology that's keeping your business from growing and beating the competition. Specifically, here are a few obsolete technologies many small businesses may still use:

• Analog thermostats. Having to manually adjust a room's temperature can be time-consuming if you need to respond to changing employee and customer needs. These thermostats also lack the capacity to learn from your behaviours and optimize their energy output in real-time.
• Manual locks and security systems. Outdated locks and security systems may not allow you to create separate passwords and permissions for managers, employees, and guests. They also may not come with motion-activated alerts, 24/7 camera feeds, and remote management capabilities.
• Traditional or mesh Wi-Fi. Traditional Wi-Fi systems send a signal from one central router. Mesh Wi-Fi systems distribute signal throughout a location using various nodes. However, neither solution adapts to your business connectivity needs, distributing signal in the most efficient and cost-effective ways.

How to replace this technology with smart devices

Smart devices can be lifelines for small businesses struggling to update their old technology and automate time-consuming tasks. If that sounds all too familiar, you might consider replacing your outdated platforms with these smart devices:

Smart locks

These Wi-Fi-enabled alternatives to traditional locks enable small business owners to set keyless entry codes for employees and guests, open and lock doors from their smartphones, and monitor all entrances and exits in real time. Smart locks also improve security by removing the risk of human errors like losing a physical set of keys.

Smart thermostat

Smart thermostats help you save energy and money by adapting to your business's climate—automatically heating and cooling your space based on factors like occupancy, weather, and time of day. So they can turn down the heat once employees leave on a winter night and crank it up again just before they arrive the next morning. These smart devices also connect directly with your HVAC system, using machine learning to gather usage data and optimize for energy efficiency.

Smart security camera

Smart security cameras can protect your business from intruders and theft. These smart devices use motion sensors and artificial intelligence to detect people on your premises and automatically record any suspicious activity. They also operate wirelessly, so you can place them anywhere without the hassle of dealing with cables. And they connect to the cloud, so you can easily manage video recordings and security alerts from your smartphone.

Smart lighting

Smart light bulbs can help small businesses reduce electricity bills and improve security. Smart bulbs use motion sensors to turn on and off depending on when people are in the room, or they can be programmed to light up at certain times. Like smart thermostats, smart bulbs can also adapt to your schedules and learn from your behaviors to increase energy efficiency. These devices can even adjust their color and brightness to enhance employees' comfort and productivity.

Adaptive Wi-Fi

Adaptive Wi-Fi is a smart alternative to  traditional and mesh Wi-Fi. Like mesh Wi-Fi, adaptive Wi-Fi distributes signal throughout your entire location using nodes or access points. The big difference is — instead of distributing that signal evenly to each node — adaptive Wi-Fi uses AI and machine learning to distribute signal in real time to the areas and devices that need it most. So if the front of your office needs more connection in the morning to support visitors and the conference room in the back corner of your office needs more connection for meetings in the afternoon, your Wi-Fi will adapt and send the right amount of signal to each area.