The Association of Small & Medium Enterprises (ASME) and Microsoft Singapore asserts that digitization can help small businesses increase revenue by an average of 26% and save approximately 22% in costs. If these numbers don’t encourage you, we know what will! Go through the following passages to check out some compelling reasons why every small business owner must invest in digitization.

Importance of Business Digitization 

1. Empowering Workforce

Digitization facilitates remote working – a model widely adopted by many businesses during the pandemic. Digitization helps to bring the world closer, therefore, even small businesses can employ people from around the globe and build a strong and diverse workforce. Thanks to the myriad of cloud services, the transformation of small businesses has started. This, in turn, will help to enhance efficiency, workscope, and productivity.

2. Wider Reach and Accessibility 

Digitization offers a wide array of opportunities for small businesses to position themselves in front of a wide audience. It also helps more users to access the brand and provides a seamless communication platform. Engaging a trusted website design company and creating a digital destination is important to achieve the same.

3. Increased Sales with an Online Store 

Investing in eCommerce website development and creating an online store has become immensely beneficial for small businesses. It helps them to increase sales and boost revenue.

Here are some statistics to prove the merit of an e-store. In 2016, the global retail eCommerce sales amounted to 1.845 trillion US dollars. In 4 years, i.e., in 2020, the sales increased to 4.280 trillion US dollars. By 2024, the sales are estimated to rise to 6.388 trillion US dollars. Should you seek to leverage this growth, there’s no substitute for digitization.

4. Marketing Your Products / Services 

Traditional marketing measures like hoardings, cold calling, TV and newspaper advertisements cannot help you reach a wide audience. These will drain your resources instead of resulting in excellent results.

Small businesses can extract the benefits of digital marketing to make the most of their investment. Strategic digital marketing helps to position a brand on multiple platforms and reach the right target audience. Further, digital marketing efforts can be monitored and optimized.

Marketing techniques like search engine optimization, paid advertisements, social media marketing, video marketing, email marketing, etc. are popular these days. The best part is that, unlike outbound marketing strategies, these inbound methods reach people who are actively looking for a similar product or service that you offer. Therefore, they have a better chance to convert. As you can see, investing in digital marketing services is one of the most important aspects of business digitization.

5. Increased Brand Awareness

These days, users prefer to search online before interacting with a business. Even if you own a business that demands a physical presence, say, a salon or an electronics repair centre, having a digital presence is a must if you seek to increase brand awareness.

Once you place your brand on the digital landscape, more people can find you out and learn about your products and services. Digitization has a plethora of opportunities these days. It is not simply limited to website development. For instance, if yours is a local brand and you operate locally, invest in local SEO services. With it, you can optimize your brand presence for “near me” searches. Oh and let us tell you, a study by Hubspot finds that nearly 46% of all searches are local.

6. Innovation-Driven 

Digitization gives you the opportunity to drive innovation to your business. For instance, you can equip your website with AI/ML technologies, integrate AR/VR features, and optimize for voice searches. You can also create social media-based online stores and directly sell via Facebook or Instagram. You can also create a mobile app to increase customers on the go. Opportunities are many when it comes to the digital realm. All it needs is for you to take the right step.

7. 7. Streamline Communication 

   Customer phone service using the internet is at the heart of every business, especially small businesses. Today’s customers want prompt service and rapid communication can give you a competitive edge.

   Here is a scenario. Suppose you sell coffee machines. The customers visit your website and fail to clarify some concerns. They contact you but receive no response from your end. Or a system generated mail is sent that states that an executive will be available within 2-3 business days to clarify the concern.

What do you think will happen? These potential customers will simply bounce. With so many brands available online, you cannot afford to let that happen! Because your loss is another’s gain!

Integrating a chatbot or a live chat button is helpful to ensure seamless communication. Forbes finds that 60% of millennials say that they have used chatbots. And 70% of them had a positive user experience.

8. Monitor Performance 

Monitoring performance is important for small businesses as it helps to identify if their investment is returning a revenue. As digitization helps to direct your efforts into multiple avenues, it’s important to pay attention to the overall results.

And you can do that with various analytics tools available online. From website traffic to conversion rates, PPC ad engagement rate to video viewers – you can track it all.

By now, you must have understood why and how digitization can bring a revolution to your business. Don’t waste your time and dive in. You can witness the results with consistent efforts.

Most of the small and medium-sized businesses prefer to not work with staffing agencies. They consider this to be a very luxury expenditure which is not needed by them. But it is very unsure as to when you might land on a large project and need to expand your team immediately. Such times call for using staffing agencies that take time and strategize on your behalf to expedite the hiring process.

Saves costs

Businesses normally think about how extra costs they need to bear while hiring an external agency. While the truth is, they can cut down on their operating costs when they have a helping hand. The entire cost of a new HR is also reduced, while the newly created team is also managed by the agency. The CVs will also be pre-screened and you will not be required to post them on several job boards.

Increased hiring speed

Without a very good hiring expert, the process tends to get extended over longer periods. Quickly closing the interviews and having the candidates on board is only possible by the professional staffing agents. They can do so because they have a bulk database with them and a specially designed team to look after the process. They also own software solutions that shorten the entire recruitment process while awarding them with several relevant profiles.

Quality profiles

Without a good source, having access to great quality and qualified profiles is not possible. Staffing agencies do have that access with their database getting updated regularly with pre-screened candidates who are suitable for your business.

No compliance hassle

Compliance hassles are brought into consideration when you as a business is hiring individuals. But the staffing agencies, on the other hand, already take care of all the employee benefits, taxes, payrolls, insurance, and even take care of the ever-changing employment laws. They also help keep the business updated to the changing norms to not face any legal issues.

Flexible workforce

Multiple businesses only need to expand their workforce depending on the business season. Or there might be particular requirements owing to just a specific project. It becomes difficult for the businesses to find temporary employees and hence they refer to taking staffing agency’s help. You will be free from long-term commitments.

With the help of the Hunt staffing agency, every recruitment process becomes easier, smoother, and way better than expected.

Whenever we try visualizing architecture, huge skyscrapers and well-planned skylines float in our minds. But that commercial architecture is only a part of the entire discipline. There are various other aspects like residential designs, distribution centers, and data centers that make an important part of the same field. With the proliferation of commercial as well as residential architecture, it is important for us to know about both in detail today.

Residential architectural designs

Residential designs have a very few specific design elements. Let us understand them:

Safety

There are certain safety codes and requirements that must be taken into consideration while planning a residential design.

• Basements
• Stairs
• Attics
• Plumbing
• Electrical lining

This design planning makes the place ideal for living and inhabitation.

Comfort

This involves both architectural design as well as interior design. It improves the structure of the home and hence meets everybody’s expectations.

Commercial architectural designs

Though the planning and cultural integrity is highly similar in both residential and commercial projects, the approach and outcome set them apart. There are many key differences among the two that are notable and one must consider them thoroughly.

Building needs

Residential buildings have a primary motive of making people live in them. Commercial projects here serve a lot many more purposes. Hence, the designs must reflect the purposes. Certain commercial architecture like businesses or retail stores require a mandatory listing of the following elements:

• Meeting rooms
• Storerooms
• Office rooms

There are other commercial buildings like hospitals, schools, police stations, and government buildings and every one of them have specific requirements to accommodate the building’s needs. Without having met those demands especially, the architecture will not be considered successful.

Unique requirements

Commercial buildings mostly house a lot of individuals at any given point in time. This is when the codes of the buildings alter and safety concerns arise. Here are some of the specific features that commercial architecture demands:

• Escalators
• Elevators
• Parking lots
• Gyms
• Cafeterias
• Restaurant kitchens
• Large bathrooms
• Conference rooms

Size

Owing to the number of individuals that need to be accommodated, the size of the design must be finalized. They need to be larger than residential buildings and the design must reflect its ability to accommodate.

The highly experienced Stendel Reich commercial architects know the best ways to design and plan commercial structures that meet all of the requirements.