Future-Proofing Your Small Business Starts with The Cloud—But Doesn’t End There

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April  2018

Table of Contents

• Staying Ahead of the Technology Curve                3  
• The Cloud is the On Ramp to Small Business   
   Innovation                                                                               4
• Get Smart With Artificial Intelligence and
   Machine Learning                                                               5
• Focus on Growth, Not Grind, with Business
   Application Integration                                                   6
• Bringing Physical and Digital Worlds Together
   with the Internet of Things (IoT)                                7
• Get Work Done Your Way: Business Apps
  Marry Mega Platforms                                                     8
• Blockchain for Trusted Transactions                        9
• Summary and Perspective                                            10

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© SMB Group, 2018

Staying Ahead of the Technology Curve

Technology is reshaping how everything gets done—from how we communicate to how we shop and even how we drive. Technology has also radically changed buyer and seller dynamics. Today’s customers expect companies to anticipate their needs—and will take their business elsewhere if their needs and expectations aren’t met. In fact, technology makes it easier than ever for them to do just that.

The implication is clear—embrace technology to your company’s advantage, or fall behind.

Most small businesses (fewer than 20 employees) understand this: 67% agree or strongly agree that using new technology effectively is key to their company’s survival and growth. They are investing in technology to help support a wide spectrum of business goals—from improving employee productivity to supporting changing regulatory requirements.

But it’s tough for any business to keep up with the fire hose of new technology. For small businesses, which typically lack dedicated IT staff, this challenge can be overwhelming. 

The good news is that if you’re running your core business applications with cloud-based software, you’ll be able to take advantage of new technologies in a more consumable way.

Top Seven Technology Investment Areas for Small Businesses

of small businesses strongly agree that using new technology effectively is key to our company’s survival and growth

Source: SMB Group 2018 SMB Digital Transformation Study, (1-20 employees)

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The Cloud Is the On Ramp to Small Business Innovation

Cloud applications are the new normal for small businesses. 92% already use at least one cloud application, and advantages including flexibility, cost, ease of use and speedy deployment will continue to fuel increased adoption.

But the cloud is also quickly becoming the technology backbone that will enable small businesses to take advantage of new technologies—such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), voice, Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain.

Leading cloud application providers are super-charging many of the applications you already use with new technologies to give you the new capabilities you need, the way you need them.

Instead of having to learn about, evaluate, select and purchase new technology solutions on your own, you get automatic access to them through the solutions you already use every day. You get the benefits of new technology minus the heavy lifting—enabling you to more easily and effectively take advantage of the technology you need to grow your business.

of small businesses use

at least one cloud application*

92%

Top Reasons for Cloud Deployment*

Sources: SMB Group 2017 Routes to Market Study; SMB Group 2017  (1–20 employees)

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Get Smart With Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies can help businesses to predict customer buying patterns, analyze product and service quality, personalize customer discounts and gain insights in an intuitive, contextual way.

Businesses can reap big rewards from these technologies—but it takes a lot of technical expertise to build and implement AI and ML infrastructure and algorithms.

Fortunately, cloud platform and solution providers are starting to embed AI and ML technologies into their applications to make them “smart.” This helps level the playing field for small businesses that want to take advantage of these technologies but don’t have data scientists and analytics experts on staff.

Source: SMB Group 2018 SMB Digital Transformation Study

(1-20 employees)

Small Business Investment and Plans for AI and ML

Intuit uses AI and ML to automate rote data entry tasks in its products like QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Self-Employed—giving you more time to focus on work that adds value to your business. For instance:

• Categorization automatically categorizes transactions when you import spending activity from bank accounts such as expense categorizations, saving users hours of manual tracking.
  
  
• Expensefinder helps self-employed users keep track of and differentiate between personal and business expenses by proactively gathering and scanning bank accounts and credit card transactions.

Conversational voice and chatbot technology, such as QuickBooks Assistant, can help you ask questions and get the insights you need to make better decisions in real time.

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Focus on Growth, Not Grind, with Business Application Integration

Most small businesses still use a disjointed combination of point solutions, spreadsheets, email, etc., to manage accounting, payroll, inventory, expenses, marketing and other applications.

Application integration knits business applications together so they can “talk” to each other. This reduces manual data entry and errors, connects business processes, and gives you a more unified, consistent view of what’s going on in the business.

Currently, just 48% of small businesses have fully or partially integrated their key business solutions. Those that have done so tend to rely on cumbersome custom code or manual data entry via batch file uploads.

Source: SMB Group 2018 SMB Digital Transformation Study; (1-20 employees)

Integration

But small businesses are starting to make application integration a priority—and forces are aligning to make integration easier and much more affordable.

Intuit’s App Center, for example, provides small businesses with more than 550 apps that are pre-integrated to work with QuickBooks Online. This makes it easy to quickly find and utilize new solutions to help you save time and money and improve productivity.

For instance, TSheets embeds time-tracking capabilities inside QuickBooks Online. Employees can track time from any location, using any device, and the data syncs to QuickBooks. GPS location tracking lets you see where your employees are and what they’re working on. You can manage, review and approve employee time cards to run payroll, do job costing or create invoices from QuickBooks. Any changes you make are automatically synced with TSheets, so your employee time data is always accurate.

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Bringing Physical and Digital Worlds Together with the Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things connects everyday things—such as objects, people and animals—to the internet with sensors that allow them to send and receive data. IoT solutions replace manual data collection and subjective judgments with automated data collection so you can more precisely monitor things in the physical world—from farms to the factory floor.

Once you have accurate, real-time data, you can analyze it to improve operational efficiencies, boost performance and improve security. Some businesses are even using IoT to develop new services and create new business models.

Small businesses are interested in the pragmatic use cases and potential benefits that IoT can provide. However, it takes a lot of expertise to pull together all of the necessary components into consumable cloud-based IoT solutions.

Source: SMB Group 2018 SMB Digital Transformation Study

(1-20 employees)

Fortunately, IoT ecosystems are forming to bring developers, infrastructure providers and industry experts together. These ecosystems are facilitating the development of pre-integrated, cloud-based IoT solutions for very specific requirements, such as the following:

• Helping farmers to design and automate operations to improve crop yields and optimize delivery of resources, such as water
  
• Helping small retailers to capture data on air conditioning, lighting, locks and other systems; send alerts when problems arise; and provide diagnostics to service technicians so they know what parts to bring to fix malfunctioning equipment
  
• Helping concrete companies, builders and contractors to manage mixers to ensure that concrete is the right temperature and strength when delivered to a construction site

Intuit’s experimental SmartMirror allows people to listen to or view financial reports, send invoices and more—via their mirror while they are getting ready in the morning.

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Get Work Done Your Way: Business Apps Marry Mega Platforms

“Mega” platforms—Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Instagram and others—all rely on the network effect. People start using them and sharing them. As more people use them more often to communicate, they become a pervasive part of our personal lives. Most of us use at least a couple of mega cloud platforms to interact with our friends, family and colleagues.

Once a mega platform becomes an indispensable tool for communicating with your family and friends, it’s only natural that you may want to use it to communicate and transact with your customers, suppliers and partners as well. Many small businesses already rely on mega platforms such as Gmail and numerous social media channels—and plan to invest in more. 

So, why should you need to leave these applications to send an invoice, file an expense report or conduct other transactions?

Sources: SMB Group 2017 Routes to Market Study; SMB Group

2018 SMB Digital Transformation Study(1–20 employees)

You should be able to decide where and how you want to get work done. If you prefer to use Gmail or Facebook Messenger to create and send an invoice, you should be able to do so and have it sync back to your business applications.

Intuit has integrated QuickBooks with G Suite, enabling QuickBooks users to send an invoice directly from their Gmail account or pull their time-tracking data from Google Calendar into QuickBooks.

Small business preferences for mega platforms will change over time and will differ by country and region. Intuit’s strategy is to “follow the customer” and provide integrations to the mega platforms where small businesses spend the most time—now and in the future.

G Suite

QuickBooks

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Blockchain for Trusted Transactions

Source: SMB Group 2018 SMB Digital Transformation Study; (1-20 employees)

Many people think that blockchain is only for the creation and exchange of money/cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. But blockchain can be used for any type of value-based transaction—to exchange money, property, goods, services or anything that requires an enforceable contract or authorized access.

Most early adopters are large businesses that are using blockchain to accept cryptocurrencies, but cloud-based providers are embedding blockchain capabilities into small business solutions. Intuit has already enabled QuickBooks to accept cryptocurrency payments. Because the blockchain eliminates the payment processor from the transaction, small businesses can save money on processing fees.

Since blockchain is still in the very early stages, most small businesses don’t yet understand it, and only 8% are currently using it. As vendors add new blockchain capabilities to their applications, small businesses will see new ways to use and benefit from it. Some developments to watch for include the following:

Blockchain is a new way that people and companies can create, verify and enforce value-based transactions. Blockchain transactions offer a safe, secure and transparent way to negotiate and transact in real time—without paying for a middleman. Because each transaction is immutable, encrypted and protected by permissions, no one else can tamper with it.

For the blockchain to work, parties need to agree to pre-established terms, such as the nature of the transaction and how they will work together. Once these rules are established, the blockchain does the following:

• Creates the transaction by recording it on the participants’ individual, decentralized blockchain ledgers
  
  
• Verifies the transaction (After recording the transaction, each individual ledger independently verifies that the transaction is valid by double-checking the information with the other ledgers involved.)
  
  
• Secures the transaction with encryption technologies
  
  
• Enforces the terms associated with the transaction, such as net payment terms

• Smart contracts for things such as real estate transactions, loans and financing
  
  
• Identity verification to code a person’s information so his/her identity can be verified before that person is allowed to access a digital entry point, such as a paywall on your website

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Summary and Perspective

While it’s easy to see the dramatic impact that technology is having on business, it’s often tough to find the time, expertise and resources needed to put that technology to work for your business.

However, cloud computing promises to lift much of this burden off the backs of small businesses. Cloud application vendors such as Intuit are embedding new technologies into their applications to provide users with more powerful capabilities in a natural, contextual way.

By making them part of the applications you already use—not something you have to bolt on—you can spend more time working on business goals and less time trying to sort through, deploy and manage technology.

You’ll still have to figure out how you need to adapt your business to survive and thrive—and it’s likely that technology will play a big role in helping you to achieve your goals.

However, you won’t need to become a technology expert. Cloud application vendors are investing in AI, machine learning, blockchain and other emerging technologies to give you new and better ways to build and grow your business in today’s digital age.

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© SMB Group, 2018