How SMEs are decreasing their business costs and expanding proficiency with technology

Small businesses are set up with a thrifty capital base and for the most part have insignificant working capital account. While a SME Entrepreneur needs to stress over securing clients and contacting them effectively, it is more critical to spare and reduce the cost structure. This is the place where innovation acts as a hero. To stay up with the evolving times, new-age tech players and numerous startups are getting the fight together with solutions which are valuable and moderate for small businesses.

These solutions can help diminish costs, in this manner making them serious in the homegrown business sectors as well as around the world.

Here are six different ways that SMEs can reduce business costs and become more profitable.

Marketplace (Webinar: Digital Enablement for Ecommerce - Opportunities & Challenges)

There was the point at which probably the greatest obstacle for a SME business was to reach out to the least expensive raw material provider or ensure their products/administrations reach past local area. B2B online business stages, for example, Udaan, Amazon Small Business, and Amazon Seller Services alongside similar platforms, have extended the reach for SMEs to practically every nook and corner of the country. In addition to the fact that they provide them with stages to exhibit their items help them with coordinations and warehousing as an extra. All this makes the entire sale and purchase function not only efficient but also cost effective as economies of scale come into play, which were earlier present just for large players.

Accounting solutions

Most SMEs used to keep up their Accounting in actual books and on occasion, it used to get hard for them or for their loan specialists to unravel the genuine estimation of the business, and also comprehend the the receivables and payables. Presently, with byte-sized Accounting solutions made accessible online by players, for example, Tally, ZOHO, and even SAP have not just made the entire accounting a hassle-free process, but also very affordable. Also, with GST and Income Tax filing available as a plug-in for these apps, it makes accounting a fun activity, which can be done on the go by the SME promoter.

Neobank and payment solutions 

The biggest leap in the SME world has been digitisation of payment solutions and related infrastructure. This has happened across the globe, and now making and accepting payments has become quite a convenient and intuitive process, especially for the small businesses.

Fintech lending  

Another sector which has seen huge innovation is the lending space, which is led by the new-age fintech players. The amount of data such as that from ecommerce sites, bureaus, payment gateways, accounting, social media, telecoms, and public data such as GST etc, makes the entire underwriting process much more analytical and AI driven rather than person dependent. This also makes the SME loans much faster and more affordable as the need for collateral-backed lending has been done away with. These fintech lenders are agile and keep coming with newer ways to reach and underwrite the small businesses and self-employed professionals.

Office suites

The exorbitant costs of office productivity suites force small businesses to buy the pirated copies and infringe on the copyright laws. However, a lot has changed in this space and office suites are no longer just limited to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They have got extended to cloud storage drives, video conferencing tools, e-mail clients etc. All these solutions now also come with easy payment options and a variety of combinations to choose from. Additionally, they are completely secure and upgradable. These solutions improve the productivity of the SMEs and makes them equally efficient and competitive to the much affluent and larger corporates. Many businesses quickly adopted some of these solutions during the pandemic.

Upskilling 

Another innovation which has happened, is in the space of training. Earlier, any kind of technical or non-technical courses would involve people taking time out of their working life and opting for courses in a university campus or institutions of repute. Now, most of these courses are available online and accessible to all, and even on mobile devices. This has opened a great opportunity to the promoters and employees of SME businesses, who can not only continue their day jobs but also complete these courses which helps them upskill. There is also immense savings on the travel, lodging and boarding costs, which one must incur otherwise.

So, all in all, we can note that technology and innovation in these spaces have made life much easier for SMEs.