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Movers & Shakers. The SME Owner Moves Out

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Anuj Sharma
New Update

In the last few issues we have discussed about various challenges being faced by the SME owners in adopting IT to make their companies more efficient and hence embark on a growth trajectory. One of the biggest bottlenecks to adoption of IT by SMEs is unavailability of relevant business applications. Here, we discuss what sort of apps are available for SME owners on the move.

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Mobile Apps

Some mobile apps represent a wide variety of uses and what they all have in common are simple ways to enhance your productivity. Most of them are easy to use and don't need deep prior knowledge of IT. Some focus on financials, allowing you to easily manage a ledger, accounts payable and receivables. One app focuses primarily on tracking billable work typically done by freelance consultants, a service that is increasingly being used by many businesses in these tough times.

Other apps focus on productivity. We strongly feel that productivity apps are crucial. They allow creation and management of documents that comprise the SMEs' business data, help to keep sensitive data protected and retained within company premises, and aid in communication and collaboration among employees, customers, and external contacts.

Another category of mobile apps we found to be very useful is CRM (Customer Relationship Management) app. Typically CRM apps help to effectively integrate sales, marketing and customer support functions to maximize business interactions and improve customer experience. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and post-sales support.

Surveillance and Monitoring

Many young entrepreneurs we interact with rue the fact that they get very little time to unwind. The constant need to be on the move, meeting customers, visiting vendors, monitoring production work at their own units are a big drain on time left for relaxation. One SME owner, an exporter, having made more than 70 overseas visits in the last 6- 7 years, complains of unfinished tasks at their units.

Video surveillance solutions can monitor activities of their production unit, whenever they are travelling. They cite the slow streaming speed because of poor bandwidth connectivity as a big bottlenecks to the success of such solutions, but with the introduction of 3G/4G technologies in India, we feel many of these problems will be at least, be partially solved.

Other Apps

Tripit: Any traveller who has to juggle between multiple flights and use a rented cab on the same day can attest to the need for a comprehensive and simple itinerary. Tripit is an app that allows business travellers to do just that by keeping track of trip arrangements in one place.

Google Drive: Building on Google Docs, Google's new Drive app lets users seamlessly port and edit files from PC to tablet to Smartphone. Not only is it a fully-featured office suite, the software also acts as a full cloud drive, letting you store any file type via a virtual drive app or a web interface.

Evernote: Ever had a great idea while flying cross-country? Evernote is an app that makes sure users "Remember Everything".

Expensfy: If managing travel is difficult, managing expenses can be nearly impossible. Enter Expensify, an app that keeps track of business expenses and mileage, while letting users scan and upload receipts.

With the use of some of the Business apps, as discussed above, along with solutions such as Video surveillance and devices like the E book reader, we

are sure the SME owner's journey to growth will be

much smoother.

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