New Advancements In Computer Technology

Posted on: 20 November 2014

Your smartphone can do more for your business than make phone calls and check on email. You have a tool in the palm of your hand that can help you run your business from anywhere. Take advantage of the many features of your smartphone and the cloud to create a virtual office from which you can manage your small business.

Collaboration Tools

There are many document management and collaboration tools available to you in the cloud. Connect with your staff and important company data with your smartphone. Make changes to customer contracts while sitting in their waiting room. You have immediate access to company and customer information without needing to find a place to power up your laptop and access the business' network.

Front Office Tools

Cloud-based calendars let you and your staff stay in sync with important meetings and events. Task list applications keep your staff plugged into the company workflow. With this information immediately available on your smartphone, you reduce the risk of over-committing yourself or your staff to customers or vendors.

Email is readily available through your phone and cloud services. Reduce the need for a receptionist by routing customer calls through a voice service from a company like Phone Masters Ltd to an answering service or email. Some phone services allow you to flag calls that should always come to your phone and those that should go to voice mail or email for pick up later. Don't lose important calls when you're out of the office.

Back Office Tools

You can have visibility to your accounting systems, order processing, inventory and customer history through your smartphone by using cloud-based applications. Check on customer order status and payment history before calling or visiting key customers. Watch your inventory levels during peak shopping periods and adjust reorder levels to meet the demand. You're not tied to your desk with these tools and can manage operational elements of your business from a coffee shop down the street or while at a convention across the country.

Sales and Marketing Tools

Marketing campaigns that tap into the social networking channels can get immediate feedback from consumers. Tracking the feedback and modifying campaigns while they are running let you fine tune your brand message. Applications that let you monitor multiple channels at once can be accessed from your smartphone. Know how consumers are reacting to your messages on a real-time basis and create a connection with them by quickly responding.

The point of having these capabilities is not that you'll always run your business from your smartphone, but that you can when you need to. This makes your schedule more flexible to make customer and vendor visits outside of your office. The power of your smartphone allows you to stay connected with your staff, their projects and the operational data you need to manage your business.