Reducing Infrastructure Costs For Small Businesses

By Wendy Dessler, Outreach Manager, stackify.com

Business in America is at an interesting crossroads right now. The stock market is up, and many startups have seen 2017 as an opportunity to get in ahead of a potentially huge leap in the market. Should proposed tax cuts by the current administration go through, it will be a windfall for businesses of any size in the US.

Using The Tools Available

For businesses who have already established themselves, this is additionally good news. But regardless of the market’s turns, something else considerable today is the advantage technology innovations are bringing to small business.

Most notably, the proliferation of mobile devices and cloud computing have combined together such that today’s infrastructural costs can be reduced by tens of thousands of dollars while maintaining the same level of service for clients. This is done in a variety of ways, one of the most important of which being the deployment and utilization of cloud-based applications.

Considerable Advantages From Cloud Apps

There are quite a few effective cloud apps out there today. One of these is Clockspot, an organization that is touted as: “Perfect for small businesses, franchises, and mobile teams.” This application specifically can be used to reduce the time and costs involved in payroll. You can calculate payouts across the board with the click of a mouse.

When you can use an application to reduce the number of necessary operational employees, you immediately save tens of thousands of dollars.

Imagine being on the cusp of an expansion. This would require enough new workers that you would traditionally have to hire more payroll employees to properly manage operations.

Now imagine instead of doing that, you kept the same one or two individuals you already had working in this department, and had them manage a cloud app which surrogated the need for additional hires. You’ve managed to scale up without having to liquidate existing employees, allowing you to preserve your investment in them while simultaneously reducing operational costs.

Collateral Application Advantages

There are other types of application use which can benefit small businesses as well. For example, you might design a mobile app which is used to simultaneously assist customers, and in an organic way increase your clientele via marketing. This can be a great solution, but once you employ a mobile app, you’re going to have to watch it closely.

No application works like you intend it to 100% of the time--even after regular troubleshooting efforts. Maintaining a mobile app is an ongoing process, and one of the best ways to ensure your application is running as close to its intention as possible is to use solutions like Stackify, “The only developer tool that delivers app performance, metrics, errors, logs, and monitoring in one tool across all environments.”

When you can have a multitool rather than a suite of necessary tools, it becomes easier to fix and repair software applications. Time is money, and you save time—meaning you save money.

Expanding Possibility

Beyond cloud computing and application management tools, there are new ways mobile devices are being conjoined together for optimization purposes. The Internet of Things, or IoT, refers to any internet enabled device that isn’t a traditional computer—smartphones, smartwatches, smart cars. There are LED lighting fixtures which can be manipulated with a smartphone, garages, thermostats, security systems,—the list goes on.

When it comes to manufacturing, machines and other components can be optimized via IoT to collect operational data, allowing you to maintain operations longer while eliminating unproductive processes.

Whether your business is burgeoning or established, today’s technological tools can help you achieve higher levels of output at lower levels of cost, allowing you to be more competitive against both larger and similarly-sized businesses.