SMB’s, SaaS, and a Tough Economy

I was recently asked “How Valuable do you think Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products are to Smalll-to-medium Businesses (SMB) in a tough economy?”  The answer is simple – If you are an SMB, SaaS could save your company during an economic downturn, and position you to dominate when the economy recovers.

Wise investments in technology will always help position a company to be a leader in their industry. Technology creates efficiencies and lowers costs, allowing the SMB to win more business.  In tough economic times, this basic premise doesn’t change, but a large capitol expenditure and a multi-year ROI for your technology investment does become much harder to justify.

On the other hand, a small monthly investment in a SaaS solution can give you nearly instant ROI, with no up-front costs.  You receive the same efficiencies and the technical edge over your competition, but you are rewarded for the investment in 1 month, instead of 3 years.  This can be the difference between laying off valuable employees and growing your business in a tough economy.

Just about any type of software solution is available as a SaaS application.  You can streamline your Sales Order process with e-Commerce or EDI, speed up your warehouse with a Warehouse Management System, or optimize your shipping with a TMS.

Let’s say you have acquired a SaaS solution.  You have used the slowdown in your business to your advantage and are using the “down” time to train your employees to use your new solution.  Your company is benefiting from the advantages it brings.  Perhaps you are even seeing a little growth as your new technology helps you win some business from your competitors.  The economy doesn’t seem quite so bad. You are starting to thrive where others are struggling.  

Your competitors now have a choice on their hands.  Both the economy and your new efficiencies are killing them. Most will blame the economy and try to ride it out.  They will turtle up and cut costs.  Sales and marketing are usually the first to go.  This has always seemed short sighted to me, but it will be great for you.  Some of your competitors will also go looking for technology.  With a bit of luck, they will not be as smart as you.  They will be scared of this new SaaS concept, and they will go the traditional path.  They will spend their money on a big up-front software purchase, further impacting their cash flow, and probably forcing them to raise their prices or cut additional costs to recover from the purchase.  Creating an even weaker position for themselves in the marketplace.

Now the economy starts to turn.  Things are looking up.  Customers are increasing their orders, they are looking to spend more money.  Your competitors are scrambling to gear back up, to come out of the defensive position they maintained throughout the downturn.  They demolished sales and marketing, keeping only the core people necessary to survive.  Now they have to rebuild.  You on the other hand, stayed on the offensive.  You have all the pieces in place to take care of the customer, even better than you could before the economic downturn.  Your company will capitalize on this strength and rise to the top.  Now you have a position of dominance in the market, and quite possibly the competition will never be the same.

Kevin Reynolds

Making Mobile Computing Work for you

Mobile computing technology is evolving on daily. Processors are getting faster, wireless bandwidth is increasing, solid state memory is expanding in capacity and getting cheaper, battery life is extending, form factors are getting smaller, multiple radios (bluetooth, wide area, 802.11, gps) are being placed in most mobile devices, and mobile applications are flooding the market. But none of this technology will do you any good unless you know how to apply it.   If you are an operations manager in a warehouse your job is to move and manage inventory. You don’t care that your MC9090G has an Intel® XScale™ Bulverde PXA270 624 MHz processor. What you care about is how it’s going to help you move boxes faster. With the right mobile computing solution, of which the MC9090 is a piece, you can greatly increase the visibility and velocity of inventory in your warehouse.

Mobile computing can be adapted to almost any industry. The applications of mobile computing are limitless and should be developed around the fundamental core of your business. If you are a lawyer your mobile device should give you access to your client’s record from outside your office, it should allow you to check email, it should give you the ability to log your hours as you work, speeding up your billing cycle, it should replace your cell phone, and it should help you to quickly reference cases and databases relevant to your current clients needs, among other things. Bottom line: your technology purchases should be for the sake of improving your core business processes and not for the sake of technology in and of it self. Many of these business applications can be enabled on today’s consumer devices like black berries and other smartphones running windows mobile or the new android OS.

Consumer devices however are just not built for work environments. On average a consumer grade Smartphone needs to be replaced once a year when used in a work environment.  To ensure that you get the most out of your technology investment your work devices should be “rugged.”  Truly rugged mobile computers last on average for 2-5 yrs in a harsh work environment.  In addition to preventing replacement costs, rugged mobiles also reduce the costs of down time during device repair or replacement, as well as the costs of increased IT support to reset up your 2nd and 3rd smartphones to the way you liked your first. In addition to ruggedness the other critical characteristic smartphones are missing, which is integrated into most of these rugged mobile computes, is Automated Data Collection.

With Automated data collection (bar coding, RFID, and image capturing) the input of business critical information is made much faster and more accurate. The averaged skilled typist makes 1 error for every 300 key strokes.  In an e-commerce environment these errors cost $75 on average: if a product is shipped to the wrong person or the wrong product is shipped, the retailer will have to pay for return shipping and to reship the right product, have to pay for help desk operators in call centers to support the now unsatisfied customers, and the overall customer experience is diminished reducing the likely hood of repeat business.

To adopt the current hardware to your business processes requires software.  Without the appropriate software your mobile computer isn’t much more than a really fancy paper weight. Mobile computing enhances a business by automating repetitive processes, increasing information availability and flow, and by allowing migration to a paperless system which means less back office administrative work, a greener enterprise, and reduced operating costs, as well as increased worker productivity.  To realize these returns on your technology investment you need software that matches your business processes, which is easy to use, and which runs on your hardware.

So who can help you to match today’s best of breed hardware and software with your business needs? The industry term is a VAR (value added reseller) or a systems integrator. These companies partner with hardware manufactures, software developers (or often have their own software teams), and provide value added services to integrate the current technology with your business needs. With high profile customers like Kroger, The Sports Authority, MillerCoors, American Airlines, and Samsonite, Accucode has the skills and expertise to provide you with that integration. Give us a call today to learn about how mobile computing can improve your business.

Chris Barr
303 639 6111 x120
cbarr@accucode.com