Small Businesses Relying on Social + Mobile + Cloud to Succeed

Tools for the smaller business are increasingly taking advantage of advances in cloud capabilities and mobile development. The trick is to also find solutions that incorporate social features that serve a real business purpose and don’t just operate as novelties. Socially-based collaboration means more than employees using Facebook chat to converse. It involves better document sharing and smart ways to bring partners and customers into conversations.

For example, cloud-based intranets are much more advanced than in years past. In the past, simple intranets used to simply offer a place to store files and perhaps grant access to other colleagues. Advanced intranets are taking advantage of the cloud with collaboration, communication, and management tools coming together for maximum productivity. For business tools, “social” has become the name of the certain type of interaction, where it’s not a behavior but relates more to how the tools are making communications easier.

A key component that some intranet vendors are incorporating is various HR-related functions. Time tracking, for instance, is something that even the smallest business needs to implement as it grows. Successful businesses cannot become too casual, and need to have unobtrusive tools in place that can manage employees’ time for maximum productivity, since that effort relates directly to a business’ bottom line.

The cloud is, of course, ideally suited to overcome old limitations imposed by proximity. Intranet tools can now directly involve people from outside the organization, regardless of their location. Flexible solutions offer rules-based access, which allows sharing of content without the risk of exposing proprietary or competitive data. Mobile applications that connect to this system remove the computer-layer from the equation, providing workers with real-time access to stay productive regardless of their time zone. This multi-level workgroup can also be tightly integrated with CRM and e-commerce functions, where a sales lead can be brought in, and then be accessed from the intranet, which starts a standardized workflow process. Such a process can have benchmark data based on time and results, and smart systems can then pull information out for broader reports. The base intranet then moves from simply a way station of information to a potential source of business intelligence where sales and other processes can be reviewed and refined as necessary.

The power of such solutions resides in their ability to improve efficiencies even for a small office where employees work shoulder-to-shoulder. File sharing is still vital, and the company can utilize many different tools to perform and track work. Powerful intranets enable better communication, with calendar, contact and directory sharing that gives small businesses more time to focus on core activity and improving quality. And even the most insulated business send employees on business trips, so remote access to the intranet is always useful.

An overlooked feature of cloud-based intranet services for small business is the power of the search function. Developing an archive of contacts and content for the organization is worthless if it can’t be accessed efficiently. Contextual search features built into the intranet allow users to search for content across multiple mediums, including email, CRM, and all files. Based on the principle that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler, it is clear that products that unite different tools in a single space provide the greatest benefits for small businesses.  Information and workflow from one tool to another, CRM to tasks, for example, means that search and reporting is integrated smoothly, not broken into pieces like in flatter solutions such as standalone chat or storage services.

The practical applications for search come into play with the typical small business, especially when one staff member is out of the office. If James normally handles the accounting and he’s out of the office for two weeks, a non-cloud environment means data may reside only on James’ desktop or mobile device. With the cloud, various permissions systems ensure that mission critical accounting data can be found without delay.

For small businesses, systems that combine the cloud, mobile, and social rules are able to compete with larger players. Time is the most precious resource for companies of any size, and advances in collaborative technologies are making it easier to communicate, gather information, and work any time from anywhere in the world.