Thursday, July 21, 2011

Let Technology Wear Some of Your Hats

Small business owners and entrepreneurs all know that starting and operating your own business is a rewarding but tough experience. Typically when a small business is in the start-up or growth stage, the owners will attempt to wear all the hats from being the sales manager to the bookkeeper. Although this will give a small business owner a wealth of experience in operations and processes, could their time be better spent doing what they do best?

Many small business owners want to know how they can break away from doing the back office functions and most times the solution is to hire someone to do the work or outsource. Sometimes when this solution is implemented, the costs are more than the benefit and the small business owner is back at square one.

The new way to get operational tasks done is to use technology in conjunction with and employee or contractor. This way a small business owner can continue to the be the backbone of the economy and cut their operational and overhead costs considerably.

Let's take marketing and public relations for example. In the past small business owners could not compete with their larger counterparts due to the high cost of websites, customer relationship management and public relations companies, tv, and radio, etc. Nowadays a small business owner can build their own website (or outsource) with WordPress, use social media sites and apps like Facebook and Twitter for public relations and CRM, broadcast themselves on YouTube, and podcasts, and get paid instantly with PayPal, Google Checkout and others.

These are just a few ways technology can help a small business owner cut costs and focus on what they do best. Feel free to post your ideas too.

The Tech Accountant

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