The evidence is indisputable. If you run a small business today, you know you have to use technology. The big question is: how nerdy do you have to get? And it's a legit question. As a small business owner, you do what you do really well. Make cupcakes, sell homes, take photos. The last thing you want to figure out is how to set up and run an Exchange Server.
Unless, of course, you set up Exchange Servers for a living. You get my point.
And here's the great news: you don't have to know how to hack a server. The same technology, the same infrastructure, that big companies use to manage their business is available online and it's easy to set up and get rolling. The Internet, aka the cloud, makes it possible.
Thing is, a lot of small businesses and nonprofits aren't using it.
Microsoft® recently commissioned a survey for National Small Business Week that illustrates this point. From their recent article:
It's surprising that only 30 percent of small businesses are using cloud technology and 10 percent were not familiar with cloud technology at all. The power of cloud solutions like Microsoft 365 is to provide small businesses with the same computing power as much larger companies, while addressing key concerns about upgrades, security and mobility, as noted above — Microsoft 365 can alleviate these with automatic upgrades, built in enterprise grade security and access to mission-critical content from any location and any device — greatly easing the burden of doing it all on small business owners.
Take Charles Town Now, for example. They're a nonprofit trying to put Charles Town, W.Va., on the map and encourage economic development. Like a lot of other small organizations, they're interested in using the same technology that big organizations use to make the business of doing business easy. They found that with Microsoft 365.
"Office365 from GoDaddy has been a really powerful tool for us and has provided us with an incredible and affordable way to communicate with our people."
~Van Applegate, Charles Town Now
For more information on how small businesses can leverage technology and compete with larger companies, check out the full article.