"If the wind will not serve, take to the oars." Latin Proverb
You’ve overcome some incredible challenges over the past fifteen months, which is no small feat. We’re not out of the woods by any means, so adaptability is essential as you reposition your business to bounce back stronger. Connecting with peers and experts can help you understand what solutions are working for others so that you can adapt quickly and be decisive — in facing disruption, or following through on opportunities. More than eight in 10 small businesses say using new technology is key to their company’s survival and growth.5
In addition to cutting costs and seeking financial aid, many small businesses quickly adopted technology that under normal circumstances would take months to onboard. Nearly 90% considered these purchases critical to the survival of their business6. Still, adapting to a new digital reality shouldn’t mean straining your resources to onboard every available digital advancement. In order to quickly roll out innovations and drive business results, you need three things:
Nearly 75% of organisations8 plan to shift some employees to remote work permanently, according to recent Gartner research. Once the pandemic is over, according to Global Workplace Analytics, 30% of the entire workforce worldwide9 will work from home at least a few days a week. Remote work continues to dominate the business landscape, but without the proper tools, workers are less efficient, productivity slows, and security is compromised. The frustrations of unreliable connections, an inability to connect, or being dropped mid-call leads some remote team members to “go rogue,” cobbling together a collection of file-sharing and collaboration tools that may or may not be secure. In addition to needing digital tools that allow teams to work well, organisations also need tools that allow them to work well together.
Today’s workforce spends 80% of its time in meetings, phone calls, and emails10. Integrated technologies like smarter collaboration tools, improved conferencing platforms, and more reliable calling resources empower teams to collaborate efficiently while equipping individuals to contribute where they’re most productive. To create a more inclusive team experience, the technology you choose should integrate into existing tools for easier adoption. Platforms should be cloud-connected for global consistency and easy access. Solutions need to provide the necessary context to help expedite collaboration, and the tools must be reliable, secure, and compliant while eliminating the friction points that cripple productivity.
According to a National Small Business Association (NSBA) survey of more than 980 U.S. small businesses, between March and April 2020 the number of business owners and their employees working remotely doubled11, a trend that is widely expected to continue. This was the case for Second Harvest.
LinkedIn Learning’s Remote Working Foundations online course saw a 10,000+% increase from February to March 20207.
Bad times create conditions for greatness. They also create a great deal of noise. You’re likely to have been flooded with information about how to navigate this crisis. As you begin to emerge from survival mode, only look to onboard new tools and technologies if you have enough cash to cover payroll, rent, and inventory.
Case Study: Second Harvest
Before the pandemic hit, all 200 Second Harvest of Silicon Valley employees worked at the office. Today, more than 50% work remotely from home. Most employees, including the IT director, didn’t believe they could work effectively from home due to the amount of face-to-face interactions they require. To make the switch to remote work, Second Harvest’s IT department had to make sure there were enough resources for its employees, from deploying laptops to upgrading firewalls and VPN licenses. Since the pandemic started, Second Harvest has seen a significant increase in security threats compared to the previous year. Having the necessary security solutions in place to mitigate cyberthreats has been invaluable to the Second Harvest team and allows them to focus on their mission of ensuring the community has the food they need to thrive.
Learn more in our Technology to Help Your Small Business Stay the Course e-book Louise Schonberg opened Karameller, a small candy shop in Vancouver, in 2015. The shop quickly became a cultural and communal gathering place for Swedish expats living in the area. Although her website had been built for e-commerce, Schonberg hadn’t given it much thought until the pandemic hit and she was forced to close her store.
Fortunately, the team that built her online storefront enabled it with Wi-Fi, video, and DNS security. These tools allowed her to quickly transition her focus to online sales. Karameller saw its highest monthly sales in April 2020, despite the pandemic, averaging online orders three times larger than in-store purchases. And through curbside pickup, handwritten notes, and personal deliveries, Schonberg has not only stayed in business, but continues to fill cultural gaps and retain connections with Vancouver’s Swedish community.
The pandemic transformed the way consumers shop and small businesses responded by offering products and services online12. E-commerce order growth in 2020 increased 54% compared to 201913, and according to Shopify, brick-and-mortar stores have been able to replace 94% of their in-store sales online14. Your ability to deliver truly exceptional online customer experiences starts with choosing the right e-commerce platform for your business. Evaluate your options with the following considerations in mind:
Speed – As page load time increases from one to five seconds, the probability of bounce increases 90%16. To avoid losing consumers to a competitor, your e-commerce site should load in fewer than three seconds17.
Compliance – If your business transmits or stores cardholder data, you’ll need to ensure that your e-commerce site follows PCI compliance requirements. A SaaS or cloud-based e-commerce provider will handle PCI for you.
Supply chain – More than 40% of retailers expect product delays due to COVID-19 and an additional 40% expect inventory shortages18. Look for a platform that optimises for e-commerce and last mile, last-minute delivery.
AI & Automation – Create a frictionless experience for returning customers, segment consumers, and assess customer lifetime value to better target and personalise digital campaigns.19
Reliability – Downtime can have a detrimental effect on your revenue and your reputation. When your network goes down, your business goes down. That can equate to hundreds or even thousands of dollars in lost revenue per hour. Look for a platform that offers 99.99% uptime.
View a checklist of the five cybersecurity tools that can help empower your business here. Learn more about small business security resources here. Get the Cisco 2020 Big Security in a Small Business World report here.
A secure e-commerce platform is what enabled Vancouver-based Karameller to reinvent its business model and continue to grow at scale, despite being in the midst of a global pandemic.
A network that scales as your business grows enables you to add new features and functionality as you need them. Designing your network with reliability and redundancy in mind will provide your business the continuity it needs to recover quickly from unplanned events. It can also help protect your brand’s proprietary information and its reputation. You can learn more about setting up a small business network here.
When it comes to network cybersecurity, many small businesses consider themselves too small to be targeted. The truth is that cyber criminals have significantly shifted their efforts towards small businesses in recent years20.
In 2019, 78% of small businesses suffered a cyber attack21. Cybersecurity is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, however. The first step is to understand what systems are critical to your operations. For a retailer that might be a point-of-sale system; for another business, email might be most important. Identifying your critical infrastructure in this way gives you a clear hierarchy for where to start your cybersecurity initiative.
Fortunately, putting robust defences in place doesn’t mean you’ll need to onboard every solution on the market. Taking the time to understand the needs of your small business and working with a technology partner who can customise cost-effective solutions will allow you to build a more efficient infrastructure.
Case Study: Ice and a Slice
Ice and a Slice are a small, fast paced digital marketing agency based in Oxfordshire UK, specialising in the B2B technology sector. Many of their campaigns involve rendering and streaming large video files, which collectively put a lot of demand on their network. Without their own dedicated IT team, Ice and a Slice needed a fast, reliable and scalable network solution straight out of the box - so they deployed Cisco’s Meraki Go “As an agency, we need to be extremely agile and we need a network that matches that agility,” says Head of Digital, Simon Williams, “Meraki Go provides us with a reliable and secure connection that lets us be creative.” It also allowed them to move faster, work smarter and compete with bigger agencies.
