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Learning to do simple tasks within your business can add money to your bottom-line. Thankfully, with the advances in technology you can do one quick search online and find a YouTube video or blog post to educate yourself to do just about anything.
This not only helps you learn a new skill, but saves your business money by not having to hire a professional. In addition, there are lots of low-cost or free systems that enable small businesses to operate like fortune 500 companies, but without all the overhead.
Here are five ways small businesses can leverage technology to make and save money.
1. Get Free Exposure with Social Media
Signing up for social media is not only free but an effective way to create awareness about your brand. With a combined 1.5 billion and growing number of users, each tweet or post can be picked up by anyone, and shared or retweeted again and again.
This can increase the amount of people seeing your products, services or content -- with little to no effort and absolutely no cost. The more people who discover your products and services, the more customers you can get to buy from you, thereby increasing your revenue.
2. Streamline Productivity
Computers, apps and software have massively increased our productivity as businesses. Instead of using manpower to manually create and assemble things we now have these awesome systems that do it instead.
This cuts back on the need to hire employees which greatly reduces the operating costs of running your business. This is good news for other areas of operations too, like customer service, accounting and administrative support, because we now have software available to ensure better accuracy and more productivity.
3. Accept Payments Anywhere
Have you ever gone into a store, found something you wanted to buy then took it to check out and the cashier tells you they don’t accept plastic? Yep, it looks like they lost out on a sale!
The same concept applies to using technology to accept payments for your business, from anywhere. Not being diverse in how you accept payments can kill your bottom line. Being able to accept as many types of payment as possible opens your business to more options and more clientele.
4. Go Paperless
Not having to constantly print bills or receipts can save you time and money. For instance, you’re no longer chasing down that receipt that wasn’t filed correctly and can spend your energy elsewhere.
With technology, it’s now possible to move towards a completely paperless run business -- saving you money while making your data easier to store, organize and access.
With the help of apps like Scanner Pro, you can download, print and scan documents while on the go. This eliminates the cost of buying office supplies like a printer, scanner or fax machine, and saves you from having piles of paperwork lying around. This is not only good for cash flow, but for the environment too!
5. Increase Revenue with Coupons
What customer doesn’t like to save money with a coupon or discount? Get more customers to try your products by listing your business’s coupons for free on BeFrugal and use the free BeFrugal.com Coupon Application to add a tab to your Facebook page. This lists all your available coupons, updated in real-time from your store page on BeFrugal.com.
In addition to getting access to over 750,000 visitors who come to BeFrugal.com every month and spend over $100 million online every year, your business can reach more shoppers on Facebook, with use of this free tool. This is the perfect combination of using technology to increase revenue and gain new customers.
How does your business leverage technology to be more productive and save money?
Carrie Smith is a small business accountant turned financial strategist. Through her blog Careful Cents, she helps entrepreneurs and freelancers change their lives and maximize their business. Her work has been featured on The Huffington Post, Lifehacker and many other financial websites. You can find her on Twitter as @carefulcents.